It's a sad but too often true fact that when people find themselves in difficult financial circumstances and are facing foreclosure on their homes, they also face being swindled by unscrupulous individuals. To add insult to injury, many of these dishonest persons are so skilled at running their scams that they end up not only with a homeowner's money, but with his or her home as well. And as the number of US homes going into foreclosure has risen, so has the number of foreclosure scams.

The best way you have of protecting yourself from foreclosure assistance fraud is to learn exactly how these fraudsters work when they offer to aid you. If you are prepared in advance, you will greatly improve your chances of joining their lists of victims.

Equity Skimming

Being short of money can be a very scary situation for anyone, and even more so if your financial shortfall has caused you to become delinquent on your mortgage payments. Foreclosure assistance scammers have developed a strategy called 'equity skimming' in which they will offer to purchase your home so that you can pay off your mortgage and save your credit rating.

The scammers, however, will require you to let them take title to your property and promise you a portion of the sales proceeds. But once you have transferred the title to your property, they will use it as a rental to generate some easy income; in the meantime, the bank or lender will institute foreclosure proceedings. You have done nothing to eliminate your responsibility to pay back the mortgage, even though the scammer now has your home, and now the lender does not even have the home to sell to get its money back. Any kind of foreclosure assistance which requires you to relinquish title to your home is simply unacceptable.

Don't Pay For What Should Be Free

You may have thought of turning to a foreclosure assistance counselor, based on advertising which indicates such agencies will work on your behalf with your mortgage holder and get you the foreclosure assistance you need to stay in your home. They will, of course, require you to pay them in advance for their efforts.

What they fail to tell you, however, is that the services they can provide are often things you could do without having to pay anyone; the most common foreclosure assistance they provide is to get you lender to agree to a short-term lowering of or hiatus in your monthly payments until your financial situation improves. And you should already have been talking with your lender personally to try to reach such an agreement as soon as you knew you were in danger of falling behind in your mortgage.

Always do what you can to get foreclosure assistance for yourself, and get any arrangements you make spelled out in writing, to be reviewed by an attorney. Finally, check with your county's District Attorney's Consumer Fraud department when you are considering an offer of foreclosure assistance.

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