Saving a Home

By Christa Torres
Vanessa Sanchez is a housing counselor, helping numerous families throughout the south Chicago metropolitan area who are close to losing their homes.

It is part of Sanchez’s job as a counselor at the South Chicago’s Spanish Coalition for Housing to help homeowners avoid foreclosure. The coalition is a non-profit organization that helps Latino families with their housing needs, particularly in the area of counseling, education and housing resources.

In the South Chicago area alone, more than 300 houses have been placed in foreclosure market, according to the coalition, and hundreds of other families are in danger of losing their homes.

“I do only what I can when it comes to saving a home,” said Sanchez, adding that a family can get the help they need if they come in at the right time and do not wait until the last minute.

The foreclosure process begins when the borrower misses the third payment on their mortgage, she explained. The lender then sends a notice and informs the borrower that it intends to foreclose on the home. The case then goes to an attorney who reviews the case and draws up a complaint.

“The entire foreclosure process takes about 14 months to complete. Whether the family is in the beginning stages or closer to the end of the foreclosure process, our job is to help them understand what is going on, and what to expect,” Sanchez said. “There is no real set time for how long the client has, because really it is all up to the banks and their process as well,” she added."

She says she alone has serviced through her agency about 120 families have, but fears that there are more families out there that don’t know about the coalition’s ability to help them. From examining a homeowner’s financial history to assessing how far into a foreclosure process a homeowner is, the agency, Sanchez says, can utilize its many years of experience to help out many a family in need.

“We work more as the middle man,” said Sanchez. “What we do is explain the situation to our clients, make sure they understand what is going on with their home. Then we go to the banks and tell them what the homeowner wants to do, if able to in their financial situation, we then try to work out a plan to get them back to paying their mortgage at a lower payment.”

Occasionally, there are not the happy endings. There are cases where families have not gone to get help in time and have to accept the facing foreclosure on their homes, Sanchez explained. Once the 30-day period that allows a home owner a special right to redeem the property, the courts will inform a sheriff to deliver an order of possession and the homeowner can be evicted from the property.

For some families, learning to create an effective budget can go a long way to helping them keep their home from foreclosure, which is one of the first steps for those who seek help from Sanchez’s agency.

“Homeowners need to realize that their monthly budgets have to be realistic,” said Sanchez. “Driving around in an expensive car or buying their children unnecessary video games does not pay their monthly mortgage payment. It just gets them further into a financial grave than what they are already in.”