Your lender doesn't want your house

Most lenders will do almost anything to avoid foreclosure -- if you talk to the right people as soon as you can. Here's why and what you can do to save your home.

If you're in danger of falling behind on your mortgage, or if you're already late, you may be skeptical about your lender's willingness to help.
And if you take the advice we personal-finance types typically offer -- call the lender as soon as possible and ask for help -- you could find yourself stymied by the lender's bureaucracy or even told to come back when you are really behind in your payments.
Home-loan expert Jack Guttentag has heard from several borrowers who were blown off by their lenders in this way.
"(The homeowners) got a response of, 'Don't bother us. Come back when you're two months behind,' " said Guttentag, who runs the Mortgage Professor site.

Other borrowers can't even find someone to talk to them.

"It can be intimidating," said Rick Harper, the head of housing counseling for the Consumer Credit Counseling Service of San Francisco. "They may be trying to reach a company in a different time zone (with limited phone hours), or they may wind up in the collections side of the process . . . where all they hear is 'pay up, pay up.' "

It's no wonder many people become convinced their lenders are more interested in taking back their homes than in helping borrowers to keep them.

So I'm here to tell you, with the help of experts who know the mortgage-lending business, that your skepticism is almost certainly unfounded.