Behind on Your Mortgage Payments?
What actually happens when you fall behind in Texas, how much time you really have, and what you can still do about it. Free, plain English, no email required.
Missing a payment is not foreclosure
People call us convinced they are days away from losing the house because they missed one payment. That is almost never true, and the fear costs people the very weeks they could have used.
A missed payment triggers a late fee. At about 30 days it is reported to the credit bureaus. Neither of those is foreclosure, and neither is the point of no return.
The 120-day rule
Under federal mortgage servicing rules, your servicer generally cannot make the first official foreclosure filing until you are more than 120 days delinquent — roughly four missed payments. This is not permission to wait. It is time that already belongs to you, and it is far more time than most homeowners think they have.
What the months actually look like
Around 30 days
A late fee is added. The missed payment is reported to the credit bureaus. Your servicer starts calling and writing.
60 to 90 days
The letters get more serious and your servicer is required to tell you about the loss mitigation options available to you. This is the stretch where the most doors are still open — and the stretch most people spend avoiding the phone.
Around 90 to 120 days
You may receive a demand letter or a notice of intent to accelerate: the lender’s formal warning that it intends to call the entire loan due rather than just the missed payments.
After 120 days
The first official foreclosure filing becomes possible. In Texas, this is where the timeline stops being slow.
Then Texas moves fast
Texas is a non-judicial foreclosure state. Your lender does not have to sue you or stand in front of a judge to sell your home. Once the formal notices start, the process can run in as few as 41 days:
- Notice of default — you are generally given at least 20 days to cure the arrears.
- Notice of sale — filed and mailed at least 21 days before the auction.
- The sale — held on the first Tuesday of the month, on the courthouse steps of your county.
That is the part homeowners get wrong. The first four months feel slow, so people wait. The last six weeks are not slow at all.
What you can still do
Which options are realistic depends on how far behind you are, whether your income has recovered, and how much equity is in the home. Most homeowners have more than one:
- Reinstatement — paying the arrears in a lump sum to bring the loan current.
- Repayment plan — spreading the arrears across future payments.
- Forbearance — a temporary pause or reduction, usually when the hardship is temporary.
- Loan modification — changing the terms of the loan itself. Worth understanding properly before you count on it.
- Protecting the equity you have built — if there is equity in the home, there are ways to extract it and transition to a lower cost living situation, rather than watching it disappear at the courthouse.
We will walk through all of them with you, including the ones that do not involve us at all.
What this costs you
Nothing. There is no fee, no retainer and nothing to sign to talk to us. We are not attorneys and we are not financial advisors. We are DFW foreclosure specialists, we have been doing this since 2017, and the first conversation is free whether or not you ever work with us.
We will never tell you to stop talking to your lender. In fact we will get on the phone with them alongside you.
Keep reading
- Facing foreclosure right now — where you stand and how much time that leaves.
- Understanding your loss mitigation options — all six options, and the 2025 rule change.
- Your foreclosure notice, explained — which notice you got and what it means.
- Foreclosure education — the Texas process end to end.
Talk to a DFW foreclosure expert — free.
A real person answers 24 hours a day. Call or text, and find out exactly where you stand.
No cost, no obligation, nothing to sign. Se habla español.