imho if you can’t cover 2-3 months of your mortgage without your paycheck, that’s a pretty sorry state of affairs. You have no business being a homeowner. Don’t they say you should have about a year’s worth of emergency funds?
I sort of can understand if you own multiple homes in a area where the economy comes grinding to a halt and no one is paying your rent on time and you managed to spread yourself so thin that your cashflow is really bad and your cash reserves are non-existent
….but we are talking about 1 home, owner occupied, in a family with two incomes. So again, I’ll ask what’s remaining mortgage balance and what’s the monthly mortgage amount?
If we are talking about a measly $1000-2000/month, it’s almost not worth the time or effort to defer paying $3000-6000 total over 3 months. Even if you could put your money into something higher return, you aren’t going to really make that much money from arbitraging $3-6k over 3-4 months. Plus you need to waste your time arguing with the banks just to qualify. Time is money.
Time spent trying to defer 3 months of mortgage would probably be better spent trying to refinance an existing loan to the rock bottom rates we now have, so one can lower monthly payments or total interest paid or both over the remaining 15 year or ep year loan term …assuming you still have a household income.to qualify with….you could probably get that money back refinancing your existing loan to a lower rate, while you still have a job and income to qualify for a new loan… Pick where you want to spend your limited time…..since loan forbearance and refinancing are probably mutually exclusive….I’d like to see someone try to refinance into a lower rate loan right now and at the same time trying to ask for a 3 months loan forbearance…..lol.
And consider this. Let’s say you have a job and financially ok right now, but you decide to play this forbearance game… Bank gives you 3 months forbearance, so you think you are good. 3 months pass, you don’t bother to refinance your existing loan to a lower rate thinking you’ll do it after 3 months….but then the economy gets worse and you really do lose your job. Try refinancing to a lower rate after you are unemployed with no income……Good luck…. Congrats. you just blew your chance of refinancing to a lower rate, lower monthly, and lower total interest…and you are still stuck with your existing mortgage, which has now been extended by 3 months
