Wrongful Foreclosure Attorneys

What we do, and what we do not

Our firm does not offer loan modification, forbearance negotiation or foreclosure rescue services, and our firm does not accept advance fees for those services. Separately, Civil Code section 2944.7 applies to a mortgage or deed of trust secured by residential real property containing four or fewer dwelling units. It prohibits charging or collecting compensation for arranging or attempting to arrange a loan modification or other form of mortgage-loan forbearance before the promised services are fully performed.

We say this first because homeowners in default are heavily targeted. Notices of default are public record, and an approach shortly after one is recorded, with an assurance the sale can be stopped and a request for money up front, is the pattern. If someone asks for payment in advance to deal with your lender, stop and verify who you are speaking to.

What we handle is the real property side: defects in the conduct of the foreclosure, disputes about the debt or the security instrument, the anti-deficiency position, and the title questions that follow a sale.

The timeline, and the date that actually matters

Most California foreclosures are nonjudicial, conducted under the power of sale in a deed of trust and governed by Civil Code sections 2924 and following.

A notice of default is recorded and served. At least three months must pass. A notice of sale may then be recorded and served, and the sale may not occur less than 20 days after it.

The right to reinstate by curing the arrears plus costs generally continues until five business days before the sale date. That cut-off, not the sale date, is the one to plan against, because almost every option depends on which side of it you are on.

Sales are postponed frequently and a postponement does not restart the sequence. Treating the first date as real is safer than assuming it will move.

What you will owe afterwards

This is the question most homeowners actually need answered, and it turns on three provisions.

Code of Civil Procedure section 580d bars a deficiency judgment on a note once the property has been sold by the trustee under a power of sale. Because most California foreclosures are nonjudicial, this is the protection that applies most often.

Section 580b bars a deficiency on a purchase money loan secured by a dwelling for not more than four families occupied by the purchaser, regardless of how the foreclosure proceeded. Whether a refinance retains that protection depends on the facts of the refinance.

Section 726, the one-action rule, requires the lender to look to its security first and permits only one form of action.

Guarantors, pledgors and sureties do not receive the section 580d protection, which matters where a family member guaranteed the loan or an entity borrowed on a personal guarantee.

Where a foreclosure can be challenged

Most foreclosures are procedurally sound, and challenging one that is buys weeks at cost while the sale still happens. We will say so rather than take the case.

The defects that produce a real outcome are specific. Notices not served as the statute requires. The foreclosing entity not holding what it claims to hold. A payment history that does not support the default alleged. A modification or forbearance agreed and then disregarded.

We look at those first, from the loan file and the recorded documents, before recommending anything.

What to send us in the first week

The notice of default and the notice of sale if one has been served, because the dates frame everything else. The note, the deed of trust and any modification agreements. A full payment history and your own record of payments made. Any correspondence about a modification, forbearance or repayment plan.

Whether the loan was purchase money and whether you occupy the property determines the anti-deficiency position, and both are established from those documents.