Rainy day car ride
The foreclosure crisis is basically over, which is bad news for you if you are about to be hit with a foreclosure suit.
The good news is that McHenry County foreclosures are on the decline. In 2012, at the height of the foreclosure crisis, there were 3,129 chancery actions filed in McHenry County. Residential mortgage foreclosures are approximately 90-95% of chancery actions, meaning that there were approximately 2,800 – 2,900 foreclosure cases filed in McHenry County in 2012.
As of the middle of August 2014, fewer than 850 chancery actions have been filed, putting us on track for fewer than 1,400 chancery actions this year, and fewer than 1,300 residential mortgage foreclosure filings. This is approximately where we were at before the bottom dropped out in 2007. It is fairly safe to say that the mortgage foreclosure crisis is over.
The bad news about this is that the foreclosure crisis actually worked to the advantage of homeowners who were being foreclosed on. The overwhelming number of mortgage foreclosure filings in 2007 through 2013 literally swamped the courts. It used to take uncontested cases more than a year to reach judgment and judicial sale in McHenry County merely by virtue of the fact that the foreclosure judge physically could not keep up with all of the cases. As more and more of the old filings are cleared out of the court system, the foreclosure court can now dedicate more time to each case. The take away from this is that your foreclosure case is going to take much less time than your neighbors’ case took in years past.
It is more important than ever to be proactive about your McHenry County foreclosure.
No matter what your intention is–defend your McHenry County foreclosure case, counter-sue your mortgage company for deceptive practices and federal law violations, mortgage modification, short sale, try to get your payments current–you need to be proactive about your McHenry County foreclosure case. Once you have been served with papers relating to a McHenry County foreclosure lawsuit, you have 30 days to answer or otherwise plead to the foreclosure complaint, and on the 31st day the bank can and will seek a default judgment against you. Your options will quickly dissolve once you have been defaulted, and (barring extraordinary circumstances), the default judgment likely will not be unwound.
I have experience defending residential mortgage foreclosure cases. I also help my clients modify their mortgages and short sell their homes. Sit down with me for a free, no-obligation consultation to discuss the best strategy for defending your McHenry County foreclosure case.