|
If you're delinquent in your payments -- or expect to be -- the best thing to do is to contact the mortgage servicer quickly.
"They should call right away rather than waiting for a late charge notice to come out," says Tom Drennan, executive vice president for mortgages at Astoria Federal Savings on Long Island. "Part of our business is not only collecting mortgages, but also insuring that customers we deal with will be future customers."
Lenders say they're not out to get borrowers. It costs a lot of money to foreclose on a house. When borrowers suffer temporary financial setbacks, lenders prefer to cut them some slack.
Other mortgage executives repeat that message: Lenders lose money on foreclosures, so they try to avoid seizing homes and throwing out deadbeat borrowers.
|