Hoping a foreclosure mediation program buys time

Racing the sale, looking for foreclosure mediation.

The date is real now. It is printed on paper, or close enough that you feel it in your chest every time the mail comes. And somewhere in the last few days a word reached you that sounded like a brake. Mediation. It sounds promising. It sounds like exactly what you may need in this situation. But, you have not let yourself lean on it just yet. And that’s the calculated approach. Let’s see if there is anything to lean on together.

Bracing to hear it is not real here

Foreclosure mediation is a real thing in some states. But here is the part I owe you straight. Colorado is not one of those states. There is no foreclosure mediation program in Colorado's foreclosure law, no right to mediation, and no mediator to ask. The word does not appear anywhere in the statute that runs foreclosure sales here (CRS Title 38, Article 38). If you have been picturing a person with the authority to stop the date because you requested them, I am sorry. That specific person is not here.

I know how that lands when a date is close. You reached for the one lever nobody around you could explain, and it turned out to be a lever for somewhere else. Take a breath. The date can still move. It just does not move for a mediator.

Finding out who actually holds the date

So who does it move for? In Colorado, the sale is run by the public trustee of your county, and the trustee is who can postpone it. The law calls that a continuance. The trustee can continue the sale for any reason the officer deems good cause, or whenever the holder of your loan or its attorney asks for it in writing, at any time before the sale begins. There is a ceiling: a sale generally cannot be pushed past twelve months from the date it was first set, except for bankruptcy (CRS 38-38-109(1)(a)).

Read who is in that sentence. The trustee and your lender. Not a mediator, and not you asking nicely. A phone call from you, on its own, does not oblige anyone to move the day. That is the cold half of the answer, and I would rather hand it to you now than let you spend a week calling offices that cannot say yes.

Now the warm half, because there is one. Colorado wrote one specific move into the same law that forces the trustee to hold the sale, and that move belongs to you.

Relieved there is still one move that is yours

It runs through your servicer, the company you send your payment to, not through a mediator. When you get a complete loss mitigation application into your servicer's hands more than 37 days before the sale, federal rules stop them from conducting the sale while it is being reviewed. Only three things reopen that door: they deny you and your appeal rights run out, you turn down everything they offer, or you stop performing under an agreement you accepted (12 CFR 1024.41(g)). Until one of those happens, the sale waits.

Colorado turns that into something you can physically carry to the trustee's counter. No later than fourteen calendar days before the sale date, you can present the public trustee with your servicer's written confirmation that your complete application was in by that 37-day mark, or that an option was offered and you accepted it. The trustee then has to ask your servicer about it within three business days, and has to continue the sale until the servicer answers (CRS 38-38-103.2(3)). This is the hand you can still raise. Not a request that someone weighs. A paper that makes the date wait or move forever.

The pause is only as strong as the paper

I will not let you build on this without seeing its edge. The hold is not automatic relief. When the trustee asks, your servicer answers, and the answer decides. If your servicer or its attorney writes back disputing that an option was offered and accepted, or that you are keeping up with its terms, the trustee has to go forward with the sale (CRS 38-38-103.2(3)(c)). The pause lasts exactly as long as the paper holds up.

But look at the other side of that same rule. If the servicer confirms that an option was offered, you accepted it, and you are complying, the trustee must continue the sale. And if you keep complying, the holder of your loan has to withdraw the notice that started the foreclosure within 180 days of that confirmation (CRS 38-38-103.2(3)(d)(I)). That is not a date being nudged back a few weeks. That is the foreclosure being taken off the table entirely. The same move that buys time is the move that can end this.

Afraid you are already too late

If the fourteen-day mark has already passed, or there is no complete application to point to, I will not pretend the move above is yours this week. It has a deadline, and deadlines in this process do not bend for how much you deserve them to.

There is one brake left to stay in your home that works regardless of the calendar, and I want you to know what it is even if you never touch it. Filing a bankruptcy petition triggers an automatic stay, a federal stop that halts foreclosure activity against your home the moment the petition is filed (11 U.S.C. 362(a)).

It is also the heaviest lever in the building, with consequences that reach well past this one sale, which is why people who consider it almost always sit down with a bankruptcy attorney first. I am not pointing you toward it. I am refusing to let a door you did not know about stay hidden while the clock runs. And if this doesn’t feel right, we at Transitus can show you everything else still available to you.

Someone to sit across from after all

You wanted a mediator partly because you wanted a person. Someone at the table whose job includes explaining your options in plain words. Colorado gives you one, by law. By the forty-fifth day you are behind, your servicer has to assign you a single point of contact, and that person has to give you accurate information about the loss mitigation options available to you (CRS 38-38-103.1). That is the desk where the application above gets built.

And you are allowed to bring someone to your side of it. HUD-approved housing counselors do foreclosure prevention counseling for free, 24 hours a day, at the HOPE Hotline, (888) 995-4673. The Colorado Foreclosure Hotline is (877) 601-4673. A counselor cannot promise you will keep the house, and the honest ones will not try. What they can do is help you see your options and make the choice that is yours. That is most of what people hope a mediator would do.

The brake is still in reach

You came here with a date in your chest and a borrowed word in your hand, checking whether the word was real before you let it hold any weight. It does not, not here. But the reach was right, and the time you were reaching for is still there to be reached. You are not out of moves. You are one move in and plenty more to go to resolving this tough situation you are navigating.

This article is general information from Transitus, not legal, financial, or tax advice. Foreclosure rules change and every situation is different. Transitus is not a foreclosure consultant (CRS 6-1-1103) and charges no upfront fees. For free help, call the Colorado Foreclosure Hotline at 1-877-601-HOPE or consult a Colorado real estate attorney.