Tired of handling your mortgage payment problems all by yourself? Perhaps you've been desperately searching for a solution that doesn't involve losing your home to foreclosure but don't really know where to turn for help. Someone knocks on your door and introduces himself as a 'foreclosure rescue counselor.' You are astonished by the coincidence and are more than willing to hear him out. He presents you with professional-looking credentials and glowing testimonials from prior clients who've been rescued from similarly desperate circumstances thanks to his efforts. He tells you exactly what you want to hear-

"I'll get you a second mortgage with lower monthly payments"

"We'll buy your house as it is"

"I'll save your credit"

"If you sell the house to my company, the foreclosure will not be recorded against you. It'll go on our records"

He might seem like a godsend sent to bail you out of your distress. In all likelihood though, the person is probably an experienced scammer who is only out to steal your money, your home, or both. The 'bail out' foreclosure scam is one of the most popular scams that con artists pull on unwary homeowners. It's extremely easy to trick a homeowner into signing away the deed of their house, simply because their offer sounds so reasonable.

The person might tell you to sell your house to them at a very cheap rate while reassuring you that it's not a real sale. They are quick to point out that it's only a temporary measure designed to buy you time until you get your finances in order. You are told that you'll be able to stay in your own home as a renter until you're ready to buy it back from the company, with a little interest at the end of a pre-determined time period. They say they'll relieve you of your financial distress and help you save your home from foreclosure while making some profit in the process as a rescuer. You get to live in your own home, improve your credit and buy it back when your situation improves. Sounds like a win-win for all doesn't it?

The truth is that it is possible to save your home this way if you do get help from an ethical legitimate company. A genuine company will charge a moderate fee or might negotiate for a portion of your home's equity in exchange, or will include some interest in the buyback price for their role in the rescue. It's a reasonable trade since the company is using their good credit to get a second mortgage that bails you out of your desperate situation and temporarily holds the deed for you. A person who knocks on your door though and makes such an offer is probably up to no good. You need to seek out a reputed company and do a thorough background check before agreeing to such an offer. You might end being ruined otherwise since its possible to lose your home, your home's equity and still be liable for your mortgage payments simply because you unwittingly agreed to a fraudulent deal.

So seek out an ethical foreclosure rescue company. There are many resources that will help you find a legitimate outfit. The hallmarks of a fair deal include-

1) Complete written and verbal disclosure. The company will give you copies of all the documents.
2) The contract will specify favorable terms and conditions that you can actually meet.
3) A reasonable pre-determined fee for the rescuer.

You can buy your home back if you do strike a workable deal. Make sure to go through all the documents word by word and get it thoroughly checked out by your lawyer before you sign any contract.

With foreclosures reaching record highs all across the country, the number of scam artists that have cropped up to con people out of their money and homes is truly alarming. The FBI reports that mortgage fraud convictions have doubled in the past year and expects an increase in the number of foreclosure rescue scams. If you are a homeowner facing tough times, it's up to you to educate yourself on the tactics fraudsters will typically use to con you out of everything you possess. You can protect yourself from being a victim if you know what to look out for.

The only way to truly avoid being scammed out of your home and hard-earned money is to be well informed on the subject. It's easy for scammers to throw phony credentials and fake testimonials at you while intimidating you with complex legal lingo to get you to do what they want. Many homeowners have no idea that they are being scammed, so they don't take any legal action when they do lose out. The scammer easily walks away after pocketing your money or the equity in your home without any legal ramifications. In almost all these situations, it's difficult for lawyers to make any type of case stick because the scammer has a stack of documents that the homeowner has willingly signed.

Foreclosure is such a scary and confusing process that homeowner's become easy prey to con artists who know just how to take advantage of their distress. In their desperation to save their home at any cost, homeowners easily end up becoming victims of scams they wouldn't ordinarily have fallen for and lose the home they were so anxious to save. A scammer will typically promise a homeowner a fresh new start and build up their hopes with a quick way out. Some of the popular tactics used by con artists include-

1) Offering the homeowner an option to buy back their house at the end of a pre-determined lease period, with the additional incentive of helping them acquire the financing necessary to do so.

2) Persuading the homeowner to agree to a lease agreement that they can't really afford. Their monthly payments will typically be higher than their old mortgage payments.

3) Getting the homeowner to take out a second more expensive loan, while being fully aware of the fact that the homeowner cannot afford the new mortgage.

4) Having the homeowner transfer ownership of their house to the scammer, with or without their awareness by employing a number of strategies.

5) Persuading the homeowner to sign documents they don't fully understand or getting their signature on incomplete paperwork. The scammer will fill in the blanks later.

All these solutions will invariably be accompanied with the sales pitch of giving you enough time to fix your finances and get your credit in order. Con artists usually find it easy to get away with it all because they ask you to follow instructions conducive to keeping you in the dark. They've established enough trust using a combination of lies and half-truths to get you to follow what they say without question. The advice the scammer gives you will be the exact opposite of what you should be doing.

By the time you realize that you are being conned it may be too late to stop the foreclosure.

It's terrifying to realize how many homes are being stolen right out from underneath their owners under the guise of saving them from foreclosure. Officials are receiving more calls from foreclosure scam victims in a week than they received previously in a month.

Mortgage fraud rates have doubled in the last year according to FBI reports and the numbers are only expected to increase with the rising rate of foreclosures across the country.

There are many types of scams and quite a few variations of them. The National Consumer Law Center has identified the top three most popular and dangerous scams to be

1. Fake Help: The scam artist poses as a professional who has dealt with cases similar to yours and will offer you proof of his successful track record. He'll offer to help you out in the foreclosure process and stop it entirely by utilizing his knowledge and the special resources available to him. His services will typically come at a hefty price tag that you'll have to pay up front.

Scammers have charged and collected up to $1300 from homeowners desperate to stop their foreclosure. Usually the services the scam artist promises to handle are things you could have easily done yourself. You've been hoodwinked out of money that you could have used to get legitimate help from a lawyer and your house is likely to be too far along in the foreclosure process to save it, by the time you realize that you've been conned.

2. Bait-and-Switch scam: It might be possible to save your home if you could just refinance your mortgage and if you fit this particular profile, you might be at risk of being the victim of a 'bait and switch' scam.

You may think that you're applying for a new loan but in actuality the scammer has sneaked in papers or has introduced legal language that surrenders your home to him. As reprehensible as it sounds, you can actually sign away ownership of your house without your knowledge, in exchange for a 'rescue' loan.

3. Rent-to-Buy Scam: You're presented with a very sensible deal that allows you to stay in your home as a renter for a specified lease period. You are asked to sell your home to the scammer, which will allow him save your home by securing new financing with his good credit rating.

You agree to this scam and sell your home for a cheap price. The catch is though that the deal is structured in such a way that you possibly can't win. You wont be able to buy back your house and the scammer might have you evicted or might default on the new loan and the house goes into foreclosure again.

Instead of saving you from foreclosure, these scams make it inevitable. Thousands of homeowners have had their lives shattered as a result of falling victim to these 'stop foreclosure' scams.

The best time to prevent a house foreclosure is before your lender even suspects that you might have a problem. There are many things that you can do to save yourself from getting into the stressful situation of being faced with a possible foreclosure.

These five tips will help you to be sure that you can always stay in your home – until you choose to leave!

1. Budget And Save

Be sure to have a monthly budget that you keep to. Making sure that your spending is always a little less than your income is the way to financial security and a stress-free life.

Try to budget some savings each month – or at least, if you sometimes have higher income or lower spending, put the extra into a saving account rather than spending it on treats. To cover emergencies like unemployment, you would want at least 6 months of mortgage payments in your savings account all of the time.

2. Set Up A Home Equity Line Of Credit

A home equity line of credit can be a good way to make sure that you will be able to make your mortgage payments even if you do not have money saved. If you set this up before you have any financial problems, you can then activate the line of credit if you need to.

A home equity line of credit will give you instant access to credit at a low interest rate so that you don't have a late payment showing on your mortgage loan account and affecting your credit rating. All of the application is done ahead of time. Then you can pay it back as soon as possible so that you have it again if you need it another time.

3. Put Your Mortgage Payments First

Your home loan payment should always be the first payment that you make. Prioritize this over other bills, and cut any other expenses that you can to be sure of making this payment each month.

Missing one payment may not seem such a terrible thing but it immediately shows up and affects your future ratings. Your lender may start to take action as soon as 14 days after your first missed payment was due. Plus, when you have missed one payment it becomes much more likely that you will miss more.

4. Talk To Your Lender

Do not hide from your lender or hope that they will not notice that your payments are late, low or whatever problem you are having. They will instantly know if you do not make the right payment at the right time. Talk to them before you even have a problem if you can. For example, if you know that you will not be able to make next month's payment, call them now, do not wait until the payment is due. This gives you a chance to negotiate without ever having a missed payment on your record.

5. Talk To Your Family

For many people this is even harder than talking to the bank, but it is important to swallow your pride and let your family know what is happening. If the worst happens and your lose your home, they are going to find out, so why not tell them while they still have a chance to help?

You may be surprised at what your family can offer. Even if they cannot help you out with money, there may be other things that they can do. Maybe you could live with them rent free for a while, and rent out your home to cover your payments. So do not wait until you have no more choices and are faced with house foreclosure.

Terrified of losing your home to foreclosure?

Perhaps you've been searching for information everywhere on what you can do to stop it. There's a great deal of data online about how you can stop foreclosure and the alternatives available to you. Quite a few books and websites offer exhaustive information on the subject and can be a real help in walking you through various options.

Unfortunately, the sheer anonymity offered by the web has made it an ideal haunt for scam artists interested in siphoning off your money under the pretext of helping you rescue your home from foreclosure. There are quite a few websites that are little more than online storefronts for these scammers out to make a quick buck.

It's easy to get sucked in by the promises they make since their sales pitch will usually contain photographs of ecstatic homeowners whose homes have been saved thanks to the foreclosure rescue specialist. These sites may offer audio clips of people describing their experience, in addition to the fake testimonials.

If something sounds too good to be true, the liklihood is it's probably a scam. Your instincts are there for a reason — Pay attention to them. It's easy for scammers to rip people off before anyone catches on to them and transfer their storefront to another domain name at the first sign of trouble. It can be almost impossible task for authorities to pinpoint and shut down these outfits. They've usually disappeared by the time anyone makes a complaint.

Pay attention to the following tips to avoid being scammed online:

1) Never surrender any information like your credit card details, social security numbers and other personal information to any website promising to rescue you from foreclosure. You might be asked to submit all this information for the foreclosure rescue company to review your situation and your credit history. Don't submit this information at any cost.

2) Check to see whether complaints pop up against the business by doing a search on the company or individual's name, along with search strings that include words such as scam, complaint, fraud etc.

The best way to avoid being scammed is not conduct any financial transaction online involving foreclosure rescue. Find an offline foreclosure rescue outfit that you can interact with face to face which has an actual office that you can go to and personnel or help-lines that you can interact with. This will give you an added layer of security as opposed to interacting with unknown people on a site or email address.

The easiest way to avoid foreclosure is by starting early. However, if it is too late for you to do that, there may still be ways that you can prevent or delay the bank from taking possession of your home.

Receiving a foreclosure notice is certainly not a time to give up. You should know that only around 5% of people lose their homes in the foreclosure process as set out by the state. Of the rest, around 40% get refinancing, 20% renegotiate their loan with the same lender, and 35% file for bankruptcy.

If you received a Notice Of Default then in most states you still have a legal 90 days before the bank can sell your home. In this situation you still have a chance of getting refinancing to cover the loan. You should do this as soon as possible before the credit agencies log the Notice and your credit rating drops.

If you received a Notice Of Sale, you will have much less time. This comes 90 days after the Notice Of Default and gives only 15-30 days until the property will be sold at the county courthouse. At this time the lender will be expecting you to move out and give them possession of the property.

Declaring bankruptcy can be a way to delay or even avoid the sale. You will need to come up with a way to hold on to your home after the bankruptcy but it will buy you some time and if you have other debts, it may be the best option for you.

In this situation you should see a good lawyer who specializes in foreclosure, debt management and the bankruptcy process. They can advise you on whether bankruptcy is a good option for you and how to manage it now and in the future.

Remember that these Notices are made public, so you will be vulnerable to foreclosure rescue scammers at that time. It is a good rule not to accept an offer from anybody who approaches you. Instead, go to foreclosure rescue companies that you pick out yourself.

One foreclosure scam that you should be aware of is where somebody offers to take over your payments if you let them move into the house. Never agree to this. You have no rights in that situation and once the person has the keys they can simply rent out your house for the time that is left until foreclosure. They probably will not make a single payment and the bank will get the house.

You also may still be able to find financing to buy the house back at the very last moment, possibly even by buying it at the auction. However, it is better to buy it back ahead of the auction if you possibly can. Then you can negotiate with the bank directly. At the auction you may have competition from realtors and property development companies who will push the price up above what you owe.

Remember that you have a good chance and you should focus on all the possibilities that are open to you, all through the process, so that you can avoid foreclosure like many other people.

Have you fallen behind on your monthly mortgage payments despite your best efforts? Perhaps you have even begun to dread the arrival of a foreclosure notice from your bank. If your home is the only asset you have left, you might justifiably be quite tempted by the idea of utilizing any equity you have in your home to lessen your financial distress. It's a good strategy and the right deal can give you the breathing time you need to fix your finances–only if you don't get scammed.

If you are facing foreclosure, then the money you've piled up in your home's equity can be a lifesaver. Unfortunately many scam artists are out to strip you of the equity you've built up over the years and it's frighteningly easy for them to do so with a 'bail out' offer. An individual or company might approach you with an offer to buy your house and sell it back to you later when your finances improve.

Let's say your house is worth $550,000 and you've got $150,000 worth of equity. You decide to sell it to them for $400,000, which is just about what you owe on your mortgage. This isn't a true sale in your mind, which is why you decide to sell your home for a song. You believe that it's only temporary and that you'll be able to buy it back pretty soon.

The company will take out a $400,000 loan as the first step towards draining your property of its equity. They may give you a little sum of money and get you to sign on to a two-year lease with the opportunity to buy it at the end of the lease period. Your situation goes from bad to worse pretty soon. The company might begin with a low rent figure and increase it steadily to the point where you can't afford to pay the rent anymore.

You may not be able to meet $1500 a month but you have no choice but to agree to the higher rent. Instead of giving you time to repair your finances you are now worried about defaulting on your rent payments. The company evicts you from the property once you start defaulting on the rent, sells your $550,000 home, pays off the loan and pockets a neat $150,000 all for just a few months of work.

In many cases the homeowner does nothing about the situation simply because they don't realize they've been scammed. It is possible to save your home with this strategy if you do find a legitimate company that is willing to bail you out. Unfortunately most of the foreclosure rescue companies out there are little more than fly-by-night operations set up to steal money from unsuspecting homeowners. You can avoid being a victim of this type of scam in the following ways:

1) Consulting a lawyer on any documents that you are asked to sign. Scammers will typically present you with a 'quit deed claim' document that's written entirely in their favor.

2) Avoiding any home sale contract that doesn't release you from your liability to pay off your mortgage. It is possible to sell your home and still be liable for the mortgage payments.

3) Being well informed about your rights and the legislation regarding home equity theft passed in your state.

If you are a homeowner facing foreclosure then you are probably desperate for any lifeline that involves you keeping your home. It's not easy to handle such a complicated process all by yourself and you may be searching for expert help to get you through these tough times. There's a lot of understandable confusion surrounding the foreclosure process especially since many states still practice non-judicial foreclosure. This means that the state is not supervising the foreclosure process. So whom do you turn to, to get more details? How do you find out how much time you have before you legally lose ownership of your home?

A legitimate counseling agency or a reputed lawyer can help you with the right answers to these questions. Most homeowners don't know how to find a counseling service or may not be able to afford expensive legal counsel. You may find yourself being contacted by someone who does seem to have all the answers to your questions and who is willing to handle the foreclosure process on your behalf. He may call himself a 'foreclosure rescuer' or a 'foreclosure counselor' and offer you any number of options to save your home, from getting a second loan to offering to buy your house from you.

The rescuer, in all likelihood, is probably a scammer who is getting ready to steal your home or a substantial amount of money from you. Foreclosure rescue fraud rates are escalating all over the country. You can find a news item almost everyday about someone who was evicted from their home or a fraudster who walked away with hundreds of thousands of dollars in home equity funds.

Signs featuring statements like — 'We buy houses', 'Instant cash for your home', 'Fast cash loans', 'Refinance your mortgage' seem to be everywhere these days. They can be found nailed to trees, hanging on fences, mounted on telephone poles, even on billboards. And these notices often do nothing but advertise the scammer's phone number to a gullible, desperate public. It's difficult for authorities to take action on these scammers, since they are careful to not do anything directly illegal but operate in underhand and unethical ways to achieve their ends.

For instance, many 'We buy houses' scams focus on getting the homeowner to agree to a second loan. The scammer tricks them into signing over the deed of their house under the guise of filling out a loan application. Another strategy is to offer the homeowner the option of living in their home as a renter, while the scammer buys their house at a cheap rate with the promise of selling it back to them at the end of their lease period. The con artist has no intention of selling your home back to you. Instead they will make it impossible for you to meet the terms of the contract by either raising the rent, stealing your mortgage payments, taking out a second loan on your house without your knowledge, or any combination of all these.

The only way to truly avoid foreclosure fraud is to be aware of their tactics and exercise a little caution every step of the way. Don't sign anything you don't understand or that isn't clear or has a lot of blank spaces. And get everything (EVERYTHING) checked out by your lawyer. If you decide to sell your home, contact an established real estate firm to handle the deal on your behalf or sell it yourself. This way you'll at least get the equity left in the property after you've settled your mortgage payments and any arrears.

The increasing number of 'Stop Foreclosure Scams' that are literally stealing the homes right out from underneath thousands of unwary homeowners are alarming officials all across the country. Foreclosure rates are soaring and scam artists who promise phony 'foreclosure rescue' services are having a field day stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from those who can least afford to lose it.

According to RealtyTrac one percent of all US households were in 'some stage of foreclosure' in 2007. A staggering 2.2 million Americans filed for foreclosure the same year. The shaky economic situation has resulted in a lot of cash-poor but house-rich owners who are desperate to hang on to the last real asset they have left. Many of them are frightened and overwhelmed making them easy targets for an emerging breed of scam artists out to con them out of their homes under the guise of helping them.

Being both extremely lucrative and having a very low-risk factor the foreclosure rescue scam business has ballooned frighteningly in recent times. Foreclosure figures are expected to increase sharply giving scam artists a steadily increasing pool of potential victims.

Foreclosure rescue scams and mortgage fraud were identified as one of the top five 'fastest-growing crimes' and 'worst complaints' to plague the country, according to a report released on July 30, 2008 by the Consumer Federation of America. (http://www.consumerfed.org/pdfs/07_complaint_report.pdf) The 'worst complaints' category is based on the number of people affected.

The FBI is also struggling to cope with the rise in mortgage fraud. They received 46,717 Suspicious Activity Reports related to mortgage fraud in 2007 and while only seven percent of these reports specified the amount of money lost, the total dollar loss from just this seven percent was $813 million. Their caseload on mortgage fraud has tripled in recent times and the agency expects foreclosure rescue scams to increase in number for at least the next two years.

The FBI's chief of financial crimes, Sharon Ormsby, believes that the problem of foreclosure rescue scams will only worsen. She commented on the issue in a recent news report on USAToday and said, "The scope is probably going to be potentially as large as the mortgage fraud problem itself."
(http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-08-04-foreclosure-scams_N.htm)

The problem has become so critical that 14 states have passed new legislation this year in an effort to protect homeowners from falling prey to 'stop foreclosure' scammers. Homeowners in financial distress, though, fall victim all too easily. Scam artists use a variety of techniques to find their victims–sending them mail, leaving flyers on their doorstep, bombarding them with phone calls every day and even sending pleasant looking company representatives to their door.

It's simple to lure distressed homeowners willing to do anything to save their home with advertisements like

'Stop Foreclosure Today'
'We Can Save Your Home–Free Consultation'
'Our Experts Will Stop Your Foreclosure This Week'
'You'll Lose Your Home If You Don't Call Us'.

It's difficult for any homeowner to verify the authenticity of the person or company since these many of these advertisements typically carry only a phone number. Most of these outfits are fly-by-night operations that milk the homeowner out of cash, their home's equity, their home or all three. Considering the huge amounts of money involved in home equity, it only takes about ten such scams for a con artist to become a millionaire.

If you are a homeowner facing the threat of a potential foreclosure and want to find a way to genuinely save your home without being ripped off, learn all you can about foreclosure rescue scams. The only way to avoid being conned is to know what to look out for. You can avoid the humiliation of being scammed and losing your money by taking a few precautionary steps.

If you are faced with the question of how to stop foreclosure, your options will depend on your current financial situation. The best choice for one person is not necessarily the best for another. Take a look at the possibilities below.

If You Can Make Your Monthly Payments From Now On

If you are able to budget for monthly payments, but you cannot immediately make all the payments that you missed, you are in a very good position and you should be able to avoid foreclosure easily. These are your options:

- renegotiate your loan with your current lender for either slightly higher monthly payments or a longer loan term

- find a different lender to refinance your loan (but be careful not to end up in a worse situation)

- cover the missed payments immediately by borrowing from family or friends, using other funds that you have, or selling something; then be sure not to miss another payment.

To agree a deal with your lender, try to talk to somebody in the loss mitigation department. This is not necessarily the first person that you will be directed to, because loss mitigation tends to be involved later down the line. However, they usually have more ability to be flexible than the collections department that you will typically speak to first.

If You Can Make Payments, But Not Enough or Full Payment

In this situation you could consider filing for bankruptcy. You will need to agree a way to pay off your debts with the court, or pay whatever you can pay. This can be the best option for people who have many debts, which is often true of people who are facing foreclosure. It is a way that you can put your financial affairs into some kind of order and also keep your home.

You should definitely see a lawyer if you are considering this option, and try to find one who specializes in bankruptcy.

If You Cannot Make Monthly Payments

If you are in a bad financial crisis that is going to continue, then probably you will not be able to keep your home and the sooner you face up to this, the better will be the outcome. Once you see it this way, leaving your home voluntarily can be a good way to retrieve your situation when there seems no other way out.

For some people, there may be the option of renting out the house. This could work if the monthly rental will cover the loan payments. However, do not forget that you will have costs and there is also some risk – what if the tenant doesn't make the rental payments? You will also need to have the lender's permission before you do this.

If losing the house seems unavoidable, you should always try to sell it yourself rather than let the lender have it through foreclosure. Of course this may take a while but if you show the lender that you are doing this, they may agree to wait.

If your house is worth more than the amount that you owe, by selling it you can come out with a little money and still have a good credit rating if you want to buy a house again in the future. You may even be able to move to a cheaper property and continue owning your own home right now.

If your house is worth less than your loan, you may still be able to settle the debt by selling it. You need to talk to your lender about whether they will accept a short sale. This means that they take whatever you get for the house, and agree to write off the rest of your debt. This is better for them than foreclosure, where they have high legal expenses.

A short sale is likely to affect your credit rating because it will usually show as less than full settlement of your debt. You may be able to avoid this by consulting a debt law specialist. But even if you cannot, this is still better for your credit rating than allowing the foreclosure to go ahead.

There are many ways to avoid home foreclosure and they all have merits in different situations. So when you are looking at how to stop foreclosure, be sure to consider all of your options.