Breaking Back Into a Home After Foreclosure - A Terrible Idea

If there is one bad idea for homeowners in foreclosure, it has to be what the community organization group ACORN has termed "homesteading." This is when the former owners, along with members of ACORN, break into the house so that the former owners can take back possession of the property. WJZ.com, a news channel, recent broadcast the story of one woman in Baltimore, Maryland losing and reclaiming her home.

The number of things wrong with this type of story are almost too many to count. First of all, the property is no longer the former owner's, but the home is also no longer owned by the bank that foreclosed. Breaking into a taxpayer-subsidized bank's foreclosed house to protest is much different than invading the private property of another person. It is doubtful that the woman profiled in the newscast would have been happy with another person breaking into her house when she owned it just because that other person thought he deserved a home.

Breaking into the home is illegal, as the ACORN representative freely admits, but that is of little concern here. The government and banks worked together to set up the housing market to fail by encouraging people to believe that homes rose in value by 20-40% a year. Banks are given the benefit of the doubt in 99.9% of foreclosure cases, while homeowners are railroaded through the legal system and forced out of their homes by judges and sheriff's departments for the benefit of the banks.

Despite this, however, homeowners should not, as a general rule, be breaking into their former properties. The risks of being arrested by a government/bank minion are too great, and the rewards too small. Protesting against the fact that the house was unjustly foreclosed (if this is what the former owners believe) can be done in more productive ways. Maybe dozens of former homeowners moving into the foreclosing judge's chambers at the courthouse, for instance.

Homesteading is a tactic that has been used to transfer title in some states, but it is quite rare. Typically, the people who move into a property must live there for nearly twenty years without the real owners making a claim to the house or attempting to have the squatters removed. It is unlikely that government-subsidized banks owning foreclosed homes will let them sit for that long. Invading the house of another private citizen is also wrong and will only engender more negative feelings towards former homeowners who lost properties to foreclosure.

In any event, there are far better ways to get a house back after foreclosure. If the woman was that interested in keeping her home, she could easily have kept up with who owned the property -- records of ownership and liens for this house are available online. She could have stayed for as long as possible when the bank owned the house, and she could have contacted the new private owner once it was sold and attempted to work out a lease. There are better options than trespassing.

Unfortunately, now the road to financial recovery will be even more difficult for this woman. Not only has her credit rating been destroyed by this foreclosure, she may end up with a criminal record for breaking and entering and trespassing on private property. These two items will show up in credit and background checks that landlords do on prospective renters, and she may find herself turned down for higher quality leasing options.

Use the district courts in self-defense against foreclosure for as long as possible. Then use the federal bankruptcy courts to discharge any other bank debt and prolong the legal process further. Negotiate with the bank or the new owner to get more time to move out and avoid eviction. Or negotiate with the new owner to buy the house back or rent it, if possible. But don't infringe on someone's private property rights just to make a stand against the banks -- this only hurts homeowners more than the lenders.

Nick writes daily articles specializing in how you can save your home from foreclosure while there is still time left before a sheriff sale or eviction. Learn to defend the bank's lawsuit in court, find a trustworthy attorney, delay a trustee sale or eviction, qualify for a foreclosure help program, and put together a realistic solution that will let you keep your property from being auctioned out from under your feet. Visit his site to read more about your options to prevent the loss of a house and understand more about how and why the housing market has been collapsing for several years now: http://www.foreclosurefish.com/