Homeowner Resources

Foreclosure Information & Referral Resources

 

If you are facing the possibility of foreclosure and would like information on your options, the web sites listed here may provide some answers.

 

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) offers information about foreclosure at several websites:

Tips to avoid foreclosure: www.hud.gov/foreclosure/index.cfm

Help for Homeowners who Face the Loss of a Home:
www.hud.gov/offices/hsg/sfh/econ/econ.cfm

HUD-approved counseling agencies by state:
www.hud.gov/offices/hsg/sfh/hcc/hccprof14.cfm

The State of California offers home-mortgage information for prospective homebuyers or homeowners who are having trouble keeping their payments current. For more information, go to
www.yourhome.ca.gov or, in Spanish, www.sucasa.ca.gov.

San Mateo County residents who need an attorney to deal with a foreclosure problem may contact the San Mateo County Bar Associations Lawyer Referral Service. www.smcba.org.

You can contact the San Mateo County Bar Association Lawyer Referral Service by calling (650) 369-4149 and pressing "3" at the prompt.

 

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If you are seeking information on specific properties in foreclosure or statistics in San Mateo County, we do not have this information. Here's the role of the Recorder in this process:

 

1. We record Notices of Default submitted by lenders. These notices are pre foreclosure documents. These are not easily used to identify properties as they give no specific information - only the name and address of the mortgage holder or lender as well as the reference information to the deed of trust. (No foreclosure has taken place at this point in the process.)
   
   
2. When a foreclosure occurs, the actual foreclosure is posted in the Hall of Justice by the lender; there is no paperwork filed in our office.
   
   
3. After a foreclosured property sells, the Trustee's Deed is recorded in our office.

Private companies or abstractors regularly visit our office, comb through the records to create database lists, and sell the information to large companies for mass distribution. We do not issue statistics nor track the documents that are recorded here.