You have been laid off. How can your mortgage lender help?

You have been laid off. How can your mortgage lender help?

You have paid your mortgage without a late payment or missed payment since you moved into your home. Suddenly you are out of work. What can you do?

There are a variety of options available:

• You can sell the house and avoid foreclosure
• You can contact your mortgage lender and discuss the options below
• You can stop making payments. Not recommended as it will destroy your credit and your ability to buy another home for many years to come.

Lets discuss contacting your lender as this is the least painful option. You can reach out to talk to your lender and see if they have a program that will allow you to miss a payment or two. The lender simply tacks these payments on to the end of the mortgage and extends your term.

Unfortunately most lenders don’t have this option available. It never hurts to ask. There is another option that the lenders will advise you of. If the mortgage was originally insured through CMHC or Genworth Financial both of them have programs available to help.

The programs can change from time to time so it is best to go to their websites and investigate the programs offered. At the time of this post the following links were working. If they are not now, simply go to the main website and search the programs out.

CMHC: contact Yazmine Boswell Default Manager 1-416-218-3384

Genworth Financial: Homeassist@genworth.ca 1-800-511-8888

This is a difficult time in a families life but you do have the ability to get help. The most important point is to contact your mortgage lender and talk about your options. They should point you in the same direction as this post.