Video Summary
How long can I stay in my property if I quit making my mortgage payments? Well, you can stay in it until such time as the mortgage foreclosure action is concluded, which is the sale of your property. It’s a public sale or auction, and even after the sale, then whoever purchases it must wait approximately 14 days before a Certificate of Title is issued. You can stay in there for that long, and then even after that time period because then the lender or whoever holds your mortgage must apply for a Writ of Possession, and then if they get a Writ of Possession, then the sheriff will serve that on you and then you have 24 hours to vacate.
I realize I have not given you a timeline as far as whether it’s nine months, a year or two years, and that’s because there isn’t a pat answer to that. It depends on the lender. I’ve talked to people who haven’t made payments for two or three years, and the lender has not filed a mortgage foreclosure action, and even when a mortgage foreclosure action has been filed, many of them languish in the court for years and not be pushed forward.
Also, if you retain the services of our law firm, we’ve been able to assist people in staying in their home for a considerable length of time, even after the foreclosure action, and try and work on trying to get a mortgage modification or resolving the foreclosure action without a deficiency judgment. Also delay it long enough if you want to try and affect a short sale.
So the amount of time as far as days and years or months is dependent upon how quickly your lender moves as far as referring the matter to a law firm to foreclose on you, and then how quickly the law firm proceeds with a mortgage foreclosure action, and even after filing the foreclosure action, how quickly they move the proceedings along. So I tell people if you don’t do anything after you’ve been served with a mortgage foreclosure complaint, you probably have about nine months to a year before they will be able to put you out of the property.
So if you get sued in a mortgage foreclosure action and would like some assistance, give me a call at 727-847-2288.