(upbeat music) - Hey, what's up foreclosure fix family and welcome to another episode with the foreclosure fix podcast where it goes to help one million homeowners successfully navigate foreclosure. I'm your host DJ Aloejo and you have come to the best place online on YouTube, on Apple, on Spotify, on every platform for help if you're facing foreclosure. Our goal is very, very simple, but it is difficult and challenging to achieve and we need your help. So if you like the content, if you think the content's helpful, if you know someone facing foreclosure, please like, subscribe, and share our content with someone who you know it can help or get them a copy of our book called the Foreclosure Fix, 12 proven steps to beat the bank, escape foreclosure, and turn your property into a profitable asset. I am fired up about today's podcast episode because I have been getting questions from different individuals out there about a couple of different things going on that obviously are top of mind for everybody. The first thing is what presidential candidate, and I think on one side, we don't really know who the candidate is quite yet, is gonna be better for homeowners in general and then homeowners facing foreclosures specifically. And that is a future podcast episode that we are working on in the background. I wanna kind of give you a teaser on it because I think it's very relevant for our time. And the big thing is that we are not endorsing any candidate. We don't lean one way left, right, red, blue, independent, whatever. We want you to pick the candidate who best aligns with your beliefs and everything else and do it in a way that is civil, in a way that upholds our democracy, in a way that is fair to all people. But we do have some insights coming up here in the future about exactly what presidential candidate may be better for real estate investors in general, based on their past, based on their policies, and which ones impact homeowners facing foreclosure the most. So please stay tuned, that episode will be coming out soon, but it's something that I'm excited about and something that you all can definitely look forward to. But on today's podcast, the reason why I am excited to talk with you and share with you insights are I am working on another presentation for a mastermind group that I'm in, and we're talking about the state of homeowners facing foreclosure right now. And so some of the information I'm sharing with you here is something that I have in the lab and is something that I am really, really kind of interested in, especially just the way homeowners in today's environment are acting as it pertains to their homes, as it pertains to their financial situation, and with all the pressures that they have going on. And so today we are specifically talking about the four types of homeowners who are facing foreclosure. So what I have done is that I have looked across the portfolio of clients we work with as it pertains to the lenders that we work with on the asset management side. And then I've also looked at my own personal portfolio as it pertains to the mortgage notes that we have. And then what I also did is got a cross-section of my colleagues who have hedge funds that are anywhere in the range of $10 million all the way up to like $100 million, just to kind of get the cross-section of what they're seeing and what they have going on in the marketplace right now for their non-performing loans. And so I'm not talking about performing home buyers, I'm not talking about the person who pays their mortgage on time every month. I am talking about those people who see the financial pressures mounting, and what are they doing, and what does that look like, and what's going on in today's marketplace as it pertains to the folks who may be facing foreclosure. And what I have noticed from my research is that there are four types of people who are facing foreclosure right now. And when I say four types of people, I am not talking about the race or the class or the socioeconomic status. I am talking about the mindset of these individuals as it pertains to their foreclosure situation. And so again, this is all mindset. This has nothing to do with how much they make or anything like that. This is the mindset and the way they are viewing their foreclosure situation. And so the goal today is to explain these four mindsets, see where you fall if you're facing foreclosure or if you have a client facing foreclosure or a family member facing foreclosure, and giving you strategies on exactly what to do if you are in one of these situations. What I will say is that two of these situations really cannot be helped. And I say that not trying to be negative, but I say that just because, you know, when people are stuck in their ways, it's not too much you can do for them. And sometimes, you know, as my wife likes to say, I can show you better than I can tell you, right? And so as a result, you need to make sure that if you are working with someone as a realtor, if you're working with someone as an investor, if you're working with someone as an attorney and they are one of these people who you really can't help, be careful how much time you spend with them because they can become a time-waster. And so with that, let me talk about the first type of person who is facing foreclosure. And that is the person who ignores it. Yes, it's the person who we are trying to reach with this podcast, it's the person who we know is out there who knows that the financial pressures are mounting, who knows that their situation is not going to change unless they do something and they are ignoring it. They are overwhelmed, they are in that position of fear, of basic, you know, a bliss. And when I say bliss, not good bliss, but dismal bliss of like, you know, oh, I just can't take another piece of mail and I get it, I was out of time for a little bit and I have mail piled up on my desk and I get it. I don't feel like opening it. I know there are some important things in there and I just, you know, it's just one of those things that it can become overwhelming. And the person who just ignores it because it's not just one bill, it's multiple bills. It's not just that, oh, I'm facing foreclosure, it's that, oh, my car may be getting repoed. Oh, my credit card bill is out of whack and I'm looking at how much interest I'm paying right now. Oh, by the way, my kid needs new shoes because school, we're going back to school soon. Oh, my kid wants to play the sport and the sport is a very expensive sport. I don't want to tell my kid no, but at the same time, like I don't really have the funds to do it. So at the end of the day, I get it. I know that it's easier to just put your head under the pillow and go to sleep. It's easier to act like this is not happening or it's easier to say that, hey, this is gonna be a 12-month process and at month nine, I will figure out kind of what to do, how to get over the situation, what is the best option for me, but I'm telling you that is not the approach you want to have. And so if you are out there and you're somebody who is ignoring your foreclosure situation, I'm gonna be the first to tell you, it does not go away. And I get it. You're thinking about, you know, I'm just thinking about the stages of grief and what's going on and how do I move forward? I get it, I get it, I get it. We know the stages of grief, the denial, the anger, the bargaining, the depression, the acceptance. I get it, I get it, I get it. But I need you to get to the acceptance phase sooner. I don't want you to wait nine months. I don't want you to wait 12 months. I don't want you to wait until somebody's knocking at your door saying, can I buy your house or better yet, I bought your house already. You need to get out, right? I don't want you to be in that position. So if you are the person who is ignoring the foreclosure situation, stop right now, stop ignoring it, take action, take one step, call and look up some free services. If you go to www.hut.gov or you can call to FHA to 800, call FHA. Yes, 800, call, C-A-L-L, FHA. These are all free foreclosure resources. You can check out theforclosurefix.com for even more resources on there as well. I am telling you, you cannot just ignore it. So do not be one of the people who ignore your foreclosure situation. It is one of the worst things that you can do and do not be one of those people. The second person who I see is the person who is too ashamed to ask for help, right? The person who is too ashamed to ask for help. If you are this person, I am here to tell you that you are not the only one. This year in the United States of America, the great United States of America, by June of this year, there were over 130,000 foreclosure filings. Again, do you hear me? 130,000 foreclosure filings just in the first six months of this year. And so if you're saying I'm the only one, well, there's 129,999 more people who are in your exact same situation. And those are the filings. These are the actual people who the bank said, okay, I am tired of playing games with you. I'm actually gonna file the paperwork. There are another millions of people who are in that pre-foreclosure spot where they miss payments, maybe missed two, maybe missed three, and the bank just hasn't gotten around to filing foreclosure on them. So you are definitely not alone. And don't ever think you're alone when you're facing foreclosure. There are so many people who have good intentions. There are so many people who are hardworking, who are dedicated, who are people out here doing great things, who are helping their families, who are the breadwinners, who are people who are just doing great things. And so I don't want you to think that because you are facing foreclosure, that it's a negative on your legacy or a negative on what's going on in your life. But the reality of the situation is that you cannot be ashamed of it. If you're a dad and you're the one who was responsible for paying all the bills and making sure that the checkbook was balanced, and you've held me a responsibility, I get it. That is a responsibility that you take seriously and one that you are maybe too proud to admit that you messed up, I get it, I understand it. But it's more important that you get the right help and fix the situation than trying to act like it's not going on. And so if you are someone who maybe is the mom and your job was to make sure that the money came in and it was going to the right places and maybe you didn't allocate it properly. And you're too ashamed to let your spouse know or your significant other know, stop now. And if you're just the single person or the parent who doesn't have help or doesn't have a lot of support and it's hard to tell your kids that we're gonna have to move. Those are difficult conversations, not conversations that I enjoy, not conversations that I wanna be a part of. But at the end of the day, not asking for help leaves you with less options. And there are options for you, if you're facing foreclosure, I'm here to tell you that, that's what this podcast is for, that's what this platform is for. There's options for you all day, every day. And so not just stick your head in the same, do not be too ashamed to ask for help because there are people, there are companies, there are solutions out there to help you. And again, if you want a free list of all resources that are free, please check us out at theforeclosurefix.com. The next person, and this is one of those people who you probably can't help. It is the person who says F the bank. And what I mean by F the bank, and I know we are a PG-13, we're a family friendly podcast. So I do apologize if you have little ones listening, but that means like forget the bank. Like I'm not dealing with the bank that the bank is not taking my house. And the picture I have of this person is the picture of somebody who is on their front house yelling at people with the shotgun in their hand saying, "Hey, you're not coming to take my house." That is the type of person who I have in my head when I think about this type of person who's facing foreclosure. They're saying it doesn't matter what letters you send me, it doesn't matter what legal documents you send me, you're not taking my house and there's nothing you can do about it. And I'm going down fighting, kicking, screaming. I am going down to the courthouse myself and telling the judge that you're not taking my house. I don't care if you can send the sheriff, you can send the police, you can send whoever you want. I'm not getting out, that type of person. And by the way, it's not that I'm just not getting out. I'm not paying either. That's the reason why I'm in foreclosure. I don't care about what you say. Maybe they're saying I'm a sovereign citizen. I'm above the laws. I'm not an illegal US American citizen. And so I do not have to worry about the laws of the land. I can just occupy the land. It's tons of different arguments that these people come up with. And there's tons of different things that they say to themselves and different Facebook groups and forums and online on the dark web or even the light web, I guess. At the end of the day, it does not matter. What matters is what the laws say and what happens when people don't pay their bills. It's that you end up in foreclosure. And what I can tell you is that sometimes these people cannot be helped. The only people who can help them is the judge when they sign the order and let the marshals or the sheriff escort them out the house. And so if you are working with someone like this who says, hey, I'm a sovereign citizen or I'm above the law of the land or I don't have to pay and there's no reason to pay. And they don't have a legitimate reason. Like they don't have a legitimate claim like where they have documentation showing the loan was released or whatever else might be the case. They're just saying this based off conjecture or based off their assumption that they don't owe money anymore. Well, I would say don't waste your time. These people cannot be helped. I have interacted with them in the past. And the only way that I have seen them be able to move on to greener pastures is when the judge helps them or the sheriff helps them or the police help them or a third party who is affiliated with the government helps them move on. And so again, if you're dealing with someone like this, do not waste too much of your time because they can definitely be time-wasters. They can get into arguments with you about why they are no longer citizens. Although when they sign their mortgage documents, they believe in the laws of the land but now they've had some great epiphany because they owe the money that they sign the mortgage and note to that they no longer own it. Again, don't waste your time with them. At the end of the day, these people will find out the hard way. The last group of people is the person who wants to fix it. And I say this is not a person who you can help. And I don't say that in a way that, oh, you can't help them. You shouldn't provide a service to them. But this person, the person who wants to fix it, the person who is dedicated to fix it, they don't need you to change their mindset. They may need help with the execution of the process. Okay, do I file bankruptcy? How do I do a modification? What's going on? But that person has made up in their mind that they're gonna fix the situation. They're gonna be proactive. They're gonna reach out. They're gonna do all the things that you know you need to do when you're facing something difficult and they're gonna get up every day and do the hard work. And so that person, you don't need to help with their mindset. You need to help them with the execution of how to achieve what they are trying to achieve. And so those are the four type of people. The person who ignores it, the person who is too ashamed to ask for help, the person who says F the bank, forget the bank, and the person who is dedicated to fixing it. And I'm telling you, the results for all four of these people are drastically different. The results of the person who says I can fix it, they start on the process ASAP. They do not wait. They do not delay. They do not pass go. They are on it. They are the ones calling over and over and over again, and they are bound to get a resolution. And what I can tell you from my experience with working with hundreds, if not thousands of different people facing foreclosure over my career, over the last years, is that the people who act, the people who do something, the people who don't wait till the last minute, always, always, always get the best outcomes. And if you want the best outcomes for yourself and for your family, and you don't want to be ashamed, and you don't want to be a laughing stock, if that's the way you perceive yourself because you're in this financial situation, then you need to take action ASAP. You don't want to wait. You don't want to delay. You need to call your server. So you need to ask for help. And you need to get the help you need in order to get to the other side of your foreclosure situation. The last thing I'll say, and it's very, very important, is that right now, credit card debt is at all time high. I was with a group of content creators just yesterday. And I learned something new, is that in addition to skyrocketing credit card debt and the increase of bankruptcies, as I've talked about on this podcast before, is that one of the things that's not included in that whole credit card debt piece are the buy here, pay here companies. I'm thinking like Karma, Carna, all those different companies that you can use when you buy stuff online. Those numbers are not included. And I know for a fact that there are tons of people who use those services who are happy to pay two dollars, you know, for next 30 years for a shirt that, you know, they've outgrown and that they use once and wash and it's in the garbage and things like that. And so as a result, those numbers are not in the data to show the increase. And so the increase we see of credit card debt, in my opinion, is actually significantly greater because of the fact that those buy here, pay here, type of companies are not included in the data that is being presented on a whole. And so when you think about the mounting factors as a homeowner, when you think about everything going on, this is the time that you need to kind of make some hard decisions about what to do, how to do it, the best way to do it, and how you move forward effectively and efficiently to avoid foreclosure, to handle your foreclosure and get on the other side, to change your financial future. And I'm here to help you. I'm gonna keep giving you great content in order to get you to the other side. And our community is all for those folks who say, I wanna help the people who are facing foreclosure. And so with that, those are your four types of people right now that we see in our ecosystem who are facing foreclosure, that's the mindset they have. That's the challenges they're going through. And at the end of the day, you wanna be the person who says, I am going to help fix my situation. I'm not gonna do it by myself. I'm gonna get the right help I need. But my mindset is there. And I'm gonna help myself, help my family, get to the other side. With that, that brings me to my favorite part of the podcast, which is our bow tie round. It's where you our listeners get to tie one on with your host, DJ Elojo. The B and Bow tie stands for your best advice for somebody facing foreclosure. The O stands for one thing you're grateful for, and the W stands for your wildest, or most interesting foreclosure related story. The B and Bow tie round today stands for my best advice for somebody facing foreclosure. And the best advice to get your head out the sand. If you are somebody who's facing foreclosure, and you know that it's coming down a pipeline, if you're in pre-foreclosure, they haven't filed the paperwork, but you've missed a couple of different payments on your mortgage, the best thing you can do is reach out to your loan servicer, give them a call and say, hey, I'm gonna be late. This is why can I get a deferment? Can I figure out a payment plan? Is there a way I can repay this over time? You know, in another four or five months, tax season's gonna be here and we'll get a big old refund. Can I pay it then? I'm gonna get a bonus at the end of the year for my job. Can I do something? Come up with a solution. Don't just come with problems, come with solutions. It's very, very important. So my best advice is don't be someone who just sticks your head in the sand. There is no shame in going through hard times. Everybody goes through them and you are no different. And one thing I'm grateful for. I am grateful for the FinCon community. Yes, I got a chance to meet up with some other content creators yesterday, had a great time, met some great people, shout out to all the folks I met. And at the end of the day, just being in the community of different content creators who are all committed to helping folks with their finances in some way, shape, or form, whether it's student loans, whether it's foreclosure, whether it's just financial awareness, is it better stock investing, better stock picking, whatever else may be the case. That community is really phenomenal. There are people doing some amazing things in the FinCon community, creating some phenomenal content and helping a lot of folks, which is just what the world needs more of, is people helping people. All right, and my wildest or most interesting foreclosure related story comes from a situation that I recently got involved in. And the situation is a straightforward situation, but it's really interesting because you need to be very, very mindful of the documents you receive and what you're doing when you're facing foreclosure. I recently met with a family and this family had a deceased mother. And so the deceased mother owned the house by herself and she had what is called a reverse mortgage. If you think about a normal mortgage, that's like a forward mortgage. Basically, you get a loan for a certain amount and you pay on that amount for the next 20, 30, 40 years. And when it's paid off, you own the house. A reverse mortgage is actually different. They're saying, hey, we're going to give you some money upfront based on the value of your house and then you don't have to pay us anything. But that mortgage is going to keep accruing and accruing and accruing and accruing and accruing until you pass away and then your family has to decide either they're going to sell the house or pay off the mortgage, whichever one. And so in this scenario, the family has decided to sell the house, but they received a payoff on the property. And the payoff on the property was $195,000. And they have an offer in their hand for about $212,000 or so for somebody to purchase the property. And they were saying, great, we got to pay off. Let's just sell the house and we're good to go. But somehow, some way they were talking with the representative at the servicer and the servicer said they needed to do a short sale. And they were just perplexed. They were like, why do we need to do a short sale on the property if the payoff is $195 and we have an offer for $212. And the purchase is going to clear out all the existing debt. Anyway, they got bad advice from somebody from the servicer. So this is not an external party. This is not a third party. This was somebody from the servicer who said, hey, you need to do a short sale on the property. And so for a couple of weeks, they started going down a path of doing a short sale. Again, they didn't know what was going on. They were just listening to the servicer and just going down that path. And so when they got in contact with me, I said, what you're saying is not making sense. A short sale only happens when the property can't satisfy the existing liens and encumbrices on the property. And this property doesn't have any secondary liens like tax liens or other encumbrices or a second mortgage. All it has is the first mortgage, the first mortgage, which is a reverse mortgage, that's on the property. And so as a result, we worked through that situation and now they have received good information and now they are on the path to selling the house in mid-August with just a traditional sale, the family or the state of the deceased party is gonna get like $20,000 and everything is all good and all clear. But what this story illustrates is the importance of one, getting good information and understanding the process of selling and buying a house, having good parties, real estate agents, real estate brokers, real estate attorneys involved in the process to make sure that the things are going the right way and just making sure that you have a full understanding and grasp on what to do when you're selling a house or if you're in foreclosure. Like you need to know all the liens and encumbrices because I've seen the opposite happen where someone's thought they were gonna do a traditional sale and they look up and they're too many liens or encumbrices on the property. So it's so important that you know what different things are attached to your property from a legal perspective. All right, with that, that ends another podcast and I'm so excited for you all tuning in. I'm excited for you all listening. I'm excited for you all being a part of the foreclosure fix family and whether you are listening for the first time or the hundredth time or the thousandth time, you are a part of the family. I appreciate you, thank you so much. And if you like the content that we are producing, do me a favor, go ahead and leave us a five star review on all the platforms. It definitely helps the algorithm and check out a copy of our book, The foreclosure fix. It is a great book. It is a book designed to help real estate professionals, homeowners facing foreclosure, real estate investors and all those who may interact with foreclosure in some way, shape, or form. It is a really good guide and I hope that you all are receiving a lot of benefit and a lot of value from it. Hey, as always, I appreciate you for listening. Thank you so much. God bless you and I will see you soon. (upbeat music) The views and opinions on this podcast are for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. If you have a specific legal question, we highly recommend you contact a qualified legal professional.
