I found a home on the local pre-foreclosure list and sent the owner a letter. Later that week, my wife and I drove by the address and several others that we could not get a good look at online. We saw that there was a garage sale going on at the home we were interested in and stopped in to talk. The garage sale organizer stated he was a friend of the home owner and was trying to help him raise the funds to save his home. I gave him my information and continued our journey.
A couple days later, the owner of the house called not because of the information I left with his friend but from the letter that I had sent. I talked with him about the situation and found out the foreclosure was due to owning $8,400 in taxes. He didn’t realize the taxes owed were to be paid part of the reverse mortgage process. I talked to a reverse mortgage lender that I know and he stated that these could be negotiated into a refinance or a second reverse mortgage could be added to cover them.
Tried for the next two weeks to get authorization from the owner to work with his reverse mortgage lender, but his return calls were hit-and-miss. The house went to foreclosure auction and he lost the home. This is truly a sad reminder of how quickly the foreclosure process can slip through the fingers of the home owner. If you are serious about saving your home you must act quickly, answer everything honestly and fill out all paperwork completely.