One of the most common things I hear when a prospective client contacts us for a mortgage refinance is “I just missed a mortgage payment and I want to refinance before it’s too late”. When I ask them about their credit, most of them reply “Oh I pay everything on time, I just got behind this one month on the mortgage”.
It breaks my heart to tell them that in many cases, it already is too late. The reason is simple if you really think about it: If your home is your biggest investment, your greatest potential asset and your largest current liability, there is nothing more important than showing that you are able to make the payment on it every month. If you are in a cash crunch, you’re better off missing or underpaying almost any other payment, such as a credit card bill, even your utility bill, instead of missing or even delaying your mortgage payment, because missing one mortgage payment can cost you tens of thousands of dollars over the years.
When you miss a mortgage payment, your credit score may not go down dramatically. But your mortgage credit quality will take a serious beating, and you’ll carry it around for years....