Timeline: What happens when you stop paying the mortgage?

So you can no longer pay the mortgage. What happens next?

Here is that process in plain English, from a non-lawyer.

In Florida, the process of the lender regaining possession of the property for non-payment is basically a lawsuit -- they sue for possession, and that is foreclosure.

1. Pre-pre foreclosure. A lot of this depend on the lender. Some will wait for 60 days to go by, then send a demand letter, then wait 30 days for a response to that . Then there will be some lag time before they actually send the file to an attorney for legal action. During this time is usually when the bank might try to work out some sort of a payment plan with the borrower. Again, different for every lender, but as you can see, at least 60 days will go by, and maybe as many as 120, and sometimes much more!
2. The bank sends the file to an attorney. The attorney is preparing to do all the legal filing to intiate foreclosure proceedings. This can take from 1 week to several weeks.
3. Service. The bank wants to serve the borrower personally with notice of foreclosure (Lis Pendens) ... they can serve by placing an advertisement in the newspaper, but they are required to prove that they aso made a diligent effort to serve all defendants personally. Also, if they do not personally serve the defendants, they will not be able to get a deficiency judgement. We might have to come back to what that is, just a bit later on. Service will take at least a week, and maybe many times that if the defendants are hard to find!
   
4. Response. The defendant has 20 days to file a response after being served. The response could be as simple as, "I have the house listed for sale and hope to pay the lender in full."
5. Motion for default is what the bank will file for if there is no response from the defendant  in 20 days. Assuming the motion is approved, we're looking at 3-5 days.
6. Motion for summary final judgement. The bank will furnish the court with papers showing the amount owed including attorney fees and whatnot, and a hearing is scheduled. This whole process can take 30-50 days.
7. Judgement of foreclosure is the court's approval that the foreclosure is proper and a sale date is set. The property is sold to the highest bidder (usually the bank) on the courthouse steps. This will be in about 30 days.
   

As you can see, foreclosure is not a swift process. In theory, if the foreclosure is uncontested and there are no scheduling backlogs anywhere in the  process, you could get one done in 90 days. But given how busy the banks and the attorneys and the courts are with foreclosures these days, 6 months is typical and much longer isn't unusual.

And, in Florida, the borrower has the right of redemption, i.e., the right to pay all amounts due and stop the process, right up until the courthouse sale.

More to come soon.