At a time of hardship across the country homeowners are struggling with debts of all kinds; the mortgage, credit cards, medical bills, and more. The media is full of half-answers and misinformation leaving homeowners uncertain on how to deal with an unbearable and unworkable load of debt. Often, in times of uncertainty, the easiest thing to do is to go with crowd. As comfortable as it may feel to know that a lot of people are doing the same thing, it’s often exactly the wrong thing to do. Many that bought homes at the height of the real estate boom are now experiencing the aftermath of going with the crowd that looked like they knew what they doing.

Witness the advice coming from the Obama Administration as they rolled out the Home Affordability and Stability Plan in late February. The announced plan of the program was to assist 4 to 5 million homeowners avoid foreclosure by offering home loan modification and refinancing incentivized with government funds. Long on announcements but short on information, one of the only pieces of advice they gave to homeowners was that they could do the loan modifications on their own. Nothing could have been further from the truth as the thousands of homeowners that followed the ended up in a quagmire of waiting, re-submitting documents, and re-starts of the process or disqualification due to trivial misunderstandings. After four months those homeowners are still stuck in the process.

People who didn’t take the advice being followed by the herd have fared much better. Those that have hired legal counsel have avoided the frustrations being faced by do it yourselfers on a daily basis and are getting their modifications completed. The reason for the difference in outcomes is that experienced attorneys that know the system regularly get faster and better results than those going into the process relying on the lender to treat them well. Additionally, successful firms specializing in loan modifications are usually very familiar with how the process works at each lender and what concessions are available.
By going into a negotiation with advance knowledge of where a lender’s “sweet spots” are and how they relate to the specific needs of the homeowner, an attorney can get the most optimal results possible in each negotiation.

Tailoring the outcome to the specific needs of the homeowner goes beyond just getting great results in the negotiation of terms for the modification, however. An experienced attorney, by assessing a client’s total financial picture, will often integrate a second solution to optimize the outcome for his client. As is often the case, homeowners that have been struggling with their mortgage have been leaning on their credit cards to cover shortfalls. By implementing a debt negotiation to cover credit cards, medical bills in collections, department store cards, signature loans, unsecured lines of credit, and revolving charge accounts, the attorney can deliver a solution that not only brings the mortgage back within reach of the homeowner, it provides a path to the elimination of consumer debts within 48 months.

This is advice that the herd may not know about at present and certainly isn’t following. That fact isn’t stopping Individuals from achieving extraordinary results that put them back in control of their finances and their lives.