Trouble with your mortgage? Need to work out a mortgage plan? What should you do?

The first step in the process should theoretically be to contact your lender. They will be the ones most willing to work with you, because if you lose your home it means another piece of property on the dusty bookshelf for them. However, contacting them is not as simple as it may sound. The lender you started out with, may not be your current lender. When the market started getting more turbulent, many lenders were bought out by bigger fish or simply went out of business.

It is also harder to just call your former or who you think may be your current lender, to find out. If your lender/lender company is still in business, odds are that they might have had to cut out a few employees to make ends meet: this means more time on hold or bouncing from one voice mail or automated selection message to another.

Yet a bigger problem, is that a loan can have many owners, as mortgages can be combined into trusts and sold to many investors.

Your best bet is to go through your servicer´s loss mitigation department, or to get help from a HUD approved housing counselor or a lawyer used to working with lenders. A good guide for this is the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, or if you cannot afford a lawyer, to use a non profit legal services office.