Help! I Just Got Served With the Foreclosure Paperwork! Part 1 of 7

Someone just knocked on your door, and served you with paperwork stating the lender is foreclosing on your Florida home.

I've seen examples of people who wanted to keep their homes pack what they could and take off, causing a terrible mess for both them and the lender. Whether you want to keep the home or get it sold to avoid foreclosure, you need to know that the game is not over. BUT you need to step up to the plate and help yourself.

The good news is, the game has changed. You were dealing with your lender's collections department in the first couple months of missed payments. They will say just about anything to get you to pay, and to make you feel bad about not paying. Now, you will be dealing with loss mitigation, and their job is to try to find better solutions to foreclosure.

This is the first of seven parts on what you should do if a foreclosure lawsuit is filed against you.

1. Realize that you still have time, and that many people are going through this. The game is NOT over. Not by a long shot. Even by the letter of the law in Florida, you're looking at a few months in the court process before the home is sold on the courthouse steps. In reality, in most cases that timeline is drawn out considerably, as the lenders are overwhelmed with foreclosures, and the courts are backlogged. The lenders WANT to try to find other solutions to foreclosure, so some also will drag their heels.

The lender is not going to just show up one day out of the blue after the filing and kick you out of your home. You are entitled to court hearings before the home ultimately would be foreclosed upon, or "sold on the courthouse steps." They can't toss you out without following a court process.

You also might feel embarrassed. Please, don't be. I work with a third-party company that sends me out to knock on doors to talk to homeowners who are in danger of foreclosure to see if I can help. The numbers of people going through this are staggering. And I have knocked on the doors of some prominent businesspeople in their communities. Many people in the lower to upper middle classes are suffering. It's just the nature of where we are in this country today. Do what you can to help yourself, whether you want to stay in the home or get it sold to avoid the foreclosure.

Scott Gregory has dozens of closed and pending short sales in the Pensacola area, and more than 80 hours of specialized training on short sale negotiation and loss mitigation issues. He has spoken with hundreds of homeowners in an effort to help them avoid foreclosure, and he has shared his knowledge and experience with thousands of real-estate agents via conference calls. Gregory was the Top Producer for the 160-agent Keller Williams Realty Pensacola marketplace in 2007. He does business in all of Northwest Florida, including Navarre, Gulf Breeze, Pensacola, Mary Esther, Destin, Ft. Walton, Milton, Cantonment and Pace. He can assist any homeowners in Florida, and co-lists short sales with agents at his company and other companies. He is a certified short sales and REO specialist with Harris Real Estate University, and holds a degree in communications from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.