Living in Foreclosure Limbo: Years Without a Mortgage Payment

Millions of people across the U.S. are staying in their homes without paying their mortgages.

Of the 4.2 million mortgage borrowers who are either seriously delinquent or have had their cases referred to lawyers to pursue foreclosures, two-thirds have made no payments at all for at least a year, and nearly one-third have gone more than two years without a payment, according to LPS Applied Analytics.

Nationwide, it takes an average of 565 days to foreclose on borrowers in default from their first missed payments to the final foreclosure auction. In places like Florida, where “robo-signing” is a particularly combative issue it takes an average of 807 days. If borrowers want to fight evictions hard, with the help of a good attorney they can remain in their homes much longer.

A vivid example, as published by CNNMoney, is the Florida family who have been living in their home for five years without making a mortgage payment. They bought their home in 2003 with an adjustable rate mortgage. After a few years, at the same time their home-inspection business was failing, their monthly payments tripled to $3,000. They want the bank to modify their mortgage so their payments are affordable, and they think the court will agree that their lender put them into a toxic loan.

There are literally millions of borrowers with stories like theirs. Hoping to renegotiate their home loans, borrowers trapped in particularly bad adjustable rate mortgages wait as their cases are being slowly worked through, living in foreclosure limbo.