Gloria D. Córdova, Bankruptcy Law Attorney

Gloria D. Córdova provides legal services to those facing Home Eviction, Foreclosures, Notice of Default or Notice of Sale.

Foreclosures: are the process used by a lender to sell your home when you have not been making the payments. In California it is actually called a trustee’s sale. The first step is a letter from the lender notifying you that you are behind and that if you don’t catch up they will be instituting the sale process. The steps for that process are:

Notice of Default This is filed with the county recorder and posted and mailed to your home. You have 90 days from the date the notice was recorded to cure any default in payments and any other fees they have added which are allowed by law and your trust deed. If you haven’t paid that amount plus anything else that has accrued before the 90 days has expired the next step will be taken.

Notice of Sale: 90 days after the filing of the Notice of Default, the Notice of Sale will be filed with the county recorder and served on you. The Notice of Sale will have a sale of your home scheduled at a public location, often the county courthouse, 21 days after the Notice of Sale was recorded. If you have received the Notice of Sale, you will have to pay the full amount owed on your loan, not merely the payments and other fees outstanding. A sale will be conducted and oftentimes the lender ends up purchasing the home.

Eviction: After the Sale has occurred, the new owner (often the Lender) will commence eviction proceedings.

Filing a Chapter 7 can slow the process because the lender must get permission from the court to continue the process of eviction. The court will invariably grant the permission and the eviction will be allowed to continue. You may get a little breathing room and be able to stay in the home approximately 30-60 days longer.

Filing a Chapter 13 will allow you to keep your home. You can arrange to make the past due payments over a period of 3 – 5 years, so long as you are able to keep the current payments current. Additionally, if you have a second or third trust deed on the home, you may be able to get rid of it completely if the value of the real property is such that the trust deed is wholly unsecured. In today’s real estate market, this is a common circumstance.