We live in troubling times. Many Dallas homeowners are having difficulty paying for their homes. The number of foreclosures rise each month and it looks like things will get worse before they get better.

Most Dallas homeowners who are behind on mortgage payments aren’t as lucky as Ed McMahon, the longtime sidekick of comedian Johnny Carson. Ed McMahon has been battling off foreclosure for months after defaulting on a $4.8 million mortgage from Countrywide Financial Corp. Then along comes Donald Trump to save the day! Donald Trump told the Los Angeles Times he will buy Ed McMahon’s six-bedroom home in Beverly Hills and allow McMahon to live in it.

A Donald Trump bailout is great news for Ed McMahon, but what about Dallas homeowners who are struggling with mortgage payments? How do we avoid foreclosure? Here are HUDs Top 10 tips to Avoid Foreclosure:

If you have you received a notice from your lender asking you to contact them?

• Don’t ignore the letters from your lender
• Contact your lender immediately
• Contact a HUD-approved Housing Counseling Agency
• Toll FREE (800) 569-4287
• TTY (800) 877-8339

If you are unable to make your mortgage payment:

1. Don’t ignore the problem.

The further behind you become, the harder it will be to reinstate your loan and the more likely that you will lose your house.
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If you are currently looking to buy Dallas TX real estate, you probably have a good idea of the general range you can expect to spend on a home. So you might be surprised when a great-looking home shows up on the MLS with what seems like a shockingly low price tag attached. The extra-low price seems too good to be true and – most of the time – it is.

In many cases, the price you are seeing does not represent the actual asking price of the property. Rather, it is likely a property that is in “pre-foreclosure” and the amount listed actually represents the balance of the defaulted loan, or the amount the current owner is in arrears. Below is an excerpt from an article I found at Inman News that does a great job explaining how these properties end up on MLS search engines, and what you can do to spot them:
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Thanks to increasingly tightening credit standards and rising interest rates, there has been a lot of buzz about the startling increase in foreclosure rates across America and the Dallas Fort Worth area.

Many Dallas Fort Worth home owners think it cannot or will not happen to them, but what would you do if you were actually faced with the prospect of foreclosure? It is important to know the “lingo” of lenders and understand what the options are so that you can make an informed decision on the best way to move forward in a stressful situation such as foreclosure.

This article from FreddieMac.com is a good resource that defines the terms associated with foreclosure and walks through the steps to take if you think you may soon be unable to pay your mortgage. Among the topics covered in this helpful article:

• What to do if you can not pay your mortgage
• What if you can no longer afford to keep your home
• Beware of scam artists

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“Homeowners: Can’t pay? Just walk away”
This was an actual headline on CNNMoney.com yesterday. It is garbage like this that is taking an already unfortunate situation and making it worse!

I promise you, that SINGLE STATEMENT right there opens up a whole can of worms on a problem that is taking Congress, the President, and many, many people who are WAY smarter than I am to try and figure out. So I cannot even really scratch the surface of talking about a problem that has taken reams of paper to write the bills that have been created to try and fix it. And listen, I know the ISSUE is the fact that people aren’t or can’t make their mortgage payments are losing their homes, while the PROBLEM is the reasons why they can’t.

People in the banking world (yes that includes brokers), have put these people in loans that aren’t right for their situation. Then there’s the falling home values, and on and on. I know one came before the other, but come on? Just tell people to walk away from their homes?

What happened to the days of doing what you said you would do? In this case, paying your mortgage? If you lost your job that is one thing. But there has been so much fraud in this business, much of it from investors who started the idea of walking away that led to massive amounts of foreclosures. This led to distressed neighborhoods, which led to lower property values. Now we have an article with a headline like this! And on top of it all, there is a company in San Diego called “YouWalkAway.com” where for $1000, they will walk you through the process of ditching your home!

With all that is going on, I think we will see more and more people trying to make a buck on losing their homes. As for the headline of the article, the writer subjectively looked at how easy it was for people to walk away from their homes when you are upside down $60,000 or more (meaning you can’t refinance), your ARM just adjusted upwards (meaning your payments are going up), and you started missing payments because you can’t afford your current ones and you can’t refinance. Maybe it IS easier to walk away and that is a sad commentary on the state of homeownership right now.

Craig Pollard is a mortgage professional and owner of Texas Mortgage Team. He specializes in the Dallas Fort Worth area and is a frequent voice on Texas Home Central’s blog. Craig can be reached at 972-317-9900 or emailed by clicking here.