What to do if you’re behind on your mortgage: the options that help

If you’re reading this with a past-due notice on the counter, take a breath. Falling behind happens to good people: a job loss, a medical bill, a payment that crept up for reasons nobody explained. You have more options than it feels like right now, and most of them start with one phone call you can make today. Here’s what to do if you’re behind on mortgage payments, what each option really costs you, and where to get free help.

Behind on mortgage payments: what to do first

Call your servicer, the company you send your payment to, before the next due date. Not after. The borrower whose name is on the loan has to make that call.

Step five matters more than it looks. Count your runway now, and it stays a drip, not a flood.

Two things not to do. Don’t cover the mortgage with a credit card advance or a personal loan. That’s robbing Peter to pay Paul: it moves the problem somewhere more expensive. And don’t stop paying and go quiet. If you stop paying, the servicer moves the loan into loss mitigation, and federal servicing rules (Regulation X) generally keep foreclosure from starting until you’re more than 120 days behind. That’s time to act, not time to wait.

Mortgage forbearance: a pause, not forgiveness

Forbearance lets you skip or shrink payments for a set time because of a hardship. That’s the good news. The hard part: the skipped payments don’t disappear. At the end of the forbearance period, the bank comes calling for the money.

Before you agree to one, find out three things: which kind of forbearance it is, what kind of loan you have (FHA and VA have their own rules), and whether your plan is an older COVID-era one, because those followed different rules. They can change the rules, so get today’s version in writing. On an FHA loan, for example, FHA updated its loss-mitigation rules in 2026, and servicers had to follow the updates by September 21, 2026, so ask for the current options, not what a friend got a few years ago.

I’m not telling you to stop talking to your servicer. Answer every call and every letter. Just keep your money in your own account until you’ve picked a way out.

How to get out of forbearance without one giant payment

When the pause ends, the servicer will ask whether you can resume your regular payment, then walk you through how to handle what you missed. In my experience they lead with the lump sum, the big scary one, then move to modifications. Let them go through the whole list before you pick.

Names and availability vary by servicer and loan program, so use this as your list of questions, not a promise of what you’ll get.

The option I usually want is moving the missed payments to the back of the loan. To get it, you generally have to show you can resume the regular payment. That’s the whole reason to save the payment during the pause: so when they ask, your honest answer is yes.

Loan modification vs forbearance

Forbearance pauses the payment. A modification changes the loan itself. That’s why I treat a modification as a last resort.

In the modifications I’ve seen offered, the servicer stretches the term, sometimes from 30 years to 40, and resets the rate closer to today’s market instead of keeping your old one. The payment drops a little. The interest you pay over the life of the loan goes up a lot.

That’s about $129 a month of breathing room for about $146,000 more interest. And because a 40-year balance shrinks more slowly, there’s less equity left for you if things go wrong later.

Last resort still means it’s on the list. If you truly can’t make the old payment anymore and the other choice is losing the house, a modification can be the right call. Before you sign one, have a HUD-approved housing counselor look at it with you, and compare it honestly against selling.

The VA Partial Claim Program

If you have a VA loan, there’s a newer tool. VA launched its Partial Claim Program on June 15, 2026, under the VA Home Loan Program Reform Act signed July 30, 2025.

Here’s how it works: after you complete a three-month trial payment plan, your servicer brings the loan current, and VA reimburses the servicer. That amount is repaid when you pay off the loan, refinance or sell. Under the law that created the program, the amount is secured by a lien behind your first mortgage, it’s only for your primary residence, and it’s generally limited to one partial claim per loan.

As of November 2026, ask your servicer directly whether it’s available on your loan, and get the terms in writing. Two things to know going in: the trial plan means you need to be able to make payments again, and the lien gets paid off when you sell or refinance, which cuts the equity you walk away with. More on the loan itself is on my page about how VA loans work.

FHA loans have a partial claim option of their own. I’ve seen them show up on title as zero-interest liens recorded behind the first mortgage, paid off at the sale or refinance, so keep that paperwork. How FHA loans work in general is on my FHA loan page.

Why can’t I just refinance?

Because a refinance by itself won’t help you, and in my experience you can’t refinance the house until you’re current again.

FHA’s own rules show why. Under its handbook, a cash-out refinance needs every mortgage payment made within the month it was due for the last 12 months, and the streamline version that skips credit qualifying needs the last six months paid the same way.

Even when you can refinance, a new loan doesn’t fix a payment problem. If your rate is low, a new loan may not even beat it, and its costs land on top. Don’t chase the wrong rabbit hole. Fix the payment problem first. Once you’re current and steady again, a refinance can make sense; here’s how I figure when a refinance pays for itself.

Why your “fixed” payment went up

Plenty of people fall behind because the payment changed even though the rate didn’t. Fixed is principal and interest. That’s fixed. The rest of your payment is escrow for property taxes and homeowners insurance, and that part resets every year. In my lifetime I’ve never seen property taxes go down.

If your payment jumped, ask the servicer for the escrow analysis that shows what changed, and check your insurance renewal and your tax assessment. How escrow works around Richmond is on my page about property taxes and escrow. Moving missed payments to the back of the loan doesn’t stop this either, since taxes and insurance keep climbing.

When selling is the smart move

Sometimes the honest answer is that the house costs more than the budget can carry. It happens. It doesn’t make you a failure, and it’s better to see it early than late.

Two checks before you decide:

• Would it rent for about the payment? Selling swaps your mortgage for rent somewhere else, so run both. My page on renting out your current home walks through that math.
• What is it really worth? Before you take a fast cash offer, find out the real value. I’ve seen owners come close to selling to an investor for barely more than they owed, on a house worth far more.

If you do sell, how you sell matters:

• A regular sale while you still have equity. You pay off the loan and keep what’s left. It isn’t a credit event at all.
• A short sale. You owe more than the house will sell for, and the bank agrees to take less. Whether you still owe the difference depends on that agreement and your state’s law.
• A deed in lieu of foreclosure. You hand the bank the property so it doesn’t foreclose.
• Foreclosure. The bank sells your house, takes what you owe plus its interest and legal fees, and you get whatever is left.

The last three carry waiting periods before your next mortgage, and they run longest after a foreclosure. Talk to a real estate attorney before you agree to a short sale or a deed in lieu.

Wherever you are in this, you don’t have to figure it out alone. Call your servicer, get the options in writing, and sit down with a HUD-approved housing counselor before you sign anything. It’s free, and a second set of eyes on a servicer’s paperwork is worth a lot.