Foreclosure means that the bank takes your house and will likely sell it to someone else. This happens when you haven’t paid your mortgage payments, likely for a number of months in a row. It usually takes a few missed payments to even trigger the process, and then it can take months for it to be carried out. So this isn’t something that happens if you just miss a single mortgage payment.
Does the bank actually want your house? They do not. Buying and selling houses on an individual basis is not something that banks are set up to do very efficiently. But what does this mean in your situation?
The bank wants you to get current on the mortgage
What the bank actually wants is simply to get some return on the money that they loaned you when you took out the mortgage loan. Ideally, this just means that you will get current on that mortgage and start paying it again. This is the best possible scenario for the bank because you then become a source of income.
The reason that banks will take your house is simply if they’ve determined that you’re never going to pay again. If you’ve lost the ability to make those mortgage payments, they will take the home and then resell it. Even if they lose money on this deal, because of the time and expenses that are involved, the bank can recoup more than if you simply kept the house and did not pay. But this is not ideal and banks would rather not foreclose on your property if possible.
As a result, this means they are often very open to options to help you get current again and avoid foreclosure. That would be best for both you and your lender. Make sure you know about all of the legal steps you can take.