Your first call should be to the mortgage lender.  Banks understand the economic downfall has placed many homeowners in a corner, unable to make their payments.  Loan modifications, Repayment plans and Reinstatements are all options to help you remain in your home; but many times a loan modification or even mortgage forbearance will not work for you; this is when you give a call to a Realtor and seek other options. 

While selling your home may not be your first choice it’s surely better than a foreclosure and bad credit scores.  A real estate agent can help you negotiate with your mortgage lender and perhaps work out a short sale.

The deal breaker here will be how long you waited to seek out help but any call for help is better than none at all.

Essentially, loss mitigation involves bringing in a third party to negotiate a repayment plan so as to avoid a foreclosure from occurring. Now, this is not to say that loss mitigation will free a person from their debts or that the lending agent will be completely agreeable during the mitigation, but it does provide at least a possible way out of a foreclosure and that can save the lender and the borrower a great many headaches. Therein lies the key to understanding why a lender may be willing to work out a deal with the person who might be foreclosed upon: there are so many costs associated with foreclosing on a property (legal, marketing, etc) that the costs of foreclosure may exceed whatever “losses” they may absorb in mitigation. As such, loss mitigation can remain a viable option under certain circumstances.