Mortgage Relief Service is the process of achieving change in the loan contract agreed to by the lender and the borrower. The mortgage relief services getting attention now are those designed to reduce the payment burden on borrowers faced with impending interest rate increases that will make monthly payments unaffordable to them.

Homeowners faced with this prospect, whether they are delinquent or not, should request professional mortgage relief assistance.

Homeowners are unlikely to get such a change unless they ask, and homeowners should also make the investment required to make their case as clearly as possible and most importantly seek professional assistance to insure the most favorable outcome possible.

The stakes are very high: your house and your credit.

In most cases, the decision on mortgage relief is not made by the firm that owns the loan. It is made by a firm servicing the loan under contract to the owner. The owner could be a single lender, or it could be a group of investors who own pieces of a mortgage-backed security collateralized by a pool of loans. Every servicing company and every lender has different guidelines that they follow when it comes to signing off on mortgage relief. This is why working with a professional and experienced mortgage relief servicing company is essential.

Whoever owns the loan (whether it is a lender or a group of lenders), the servicing firm is contractually obligated to find the solution to payment problems that will minimize loss to the owner. If the lowest-cost solution is a mortgage relief agreement, that's great -- everyone involved prefers a mortgage relief agreement instead of a foreclosure. But if a foreclosure would generate lower costs for the owner, the decision will be to foreclose. The cost of foreclosure to the borrower does not enter the decision.

Yet the decision is far from cut and dried, and it can be materially affected by whether and how the borrower presents his case.

That is why homeowners faced with this prospect, whether they are delinquent or not, should request professional Mortgage Relief Assistance.

Equity: Perhaps the most important factor affecting the mortgage relief decision is the amount of equity the borrower has in the property. Equity depends on property value, which the borrower is much better positioned to know than the servicer. The borrower knows or can easily find out how many houses in the neighborhood are for sale and what the trend has been in recent sale prices. In a weakening market, it is easy for the lender to overestimate value, and the borrower must prevent that.

Moral hazard: Servicers fear that if they are liberal in granting mortgage relief to borrowers who don't need it, they will seek mortgage relief anyway.

Lenders and Servicers protect themselves against this by entertaining mortgage relief proposals on a case-by-case basis. This is why having professional representation is so important. Unless you know exactly how to present your case and exactly who to present your case to, you run the risk of having your case denied without explanation.

Borrowers must accept the burden of proof. In addition to the data on property value, borrowers need to document that they cannot afford the payment increase that is pending, and they must document what they can afford.

To do so, borrowers need to calculate their total debt ratio: the sum of mortgage payment, other debt payments, property taxes and homeowner's insurance as a percent of their gross (before tax) income. This can be very difficult without professional assistance.

This number should be calculated as it stands now and as it would be after the rate adjustment. It should also be calculated to demonstrate what the borrower can afford.

When working with the Banks and Loan Servicing Companies the process must be handled by an experienced representative because there is a tendency for the Banks and Loan Servicing Companies to be non responsive in the hope that the borrower will go away.

Borrowers need to have persistent representation, "If a servicer says they will call back . . . forget about it. You have to call them and call them constantly. And you need to know exactly who to call and what to say. Or they will lose your paperwork, fail to return calls, put you on hold and then hang up, telling you that you do not qualify for mortgage relief. It's what they do. In order to receive mortgage relief we have to know exactly how to present our case.  We have to be utterly relentless when seeking mortgage relief. By relentlessly calling, faxing and writing the right people in the right departments with the right case, we can achieve immediate and dramatic results”.

For those who qualify, mortgage relief is not only possible, it is guaranteed.