The first thing you need to do is swallow your pride, quit ignoring the situation, and talk to your lender at the first sign of trouble. Before it gets too out of hand is the best time to try to work out a solution. There are many reasons that people fall behind in their house payments and you are no exception.

The most common causes of foreclosure generally fall under one of four categories. These include: 1) Loss of income from the main breadwinner in the family, 2) Illness, 3) Death in the family or 4) Expensive and unexpected repairs.

If the reason you are behind in a payment is the loss of income, go to your lender and tell them the situation. They more than likely will work out a plan to stop foreclosure that will allow you to have a specific amount of time to catch up your payment.

Even by adding a little extra to your regular payments until the amount is caught up is better than not paying anything at all. Should this happen a repayment plan can help you to stop foreclosure.

An illness may cause lost time from work, which can put you in a financial bind. If this is the case, another solution to stop foreclosure is called forbearance. What this entails is the situation looking good for a repayment if a temporary delay of the payments is needed to give you some breathing room. Once you get back on your feet or if you are expecting a tax refund, you can catch the payment up and everything goes back to normal. This is called reinstatement.

If a spouse dies and an income suddenly stops, you can get behind in your mortgage payment very easily. This definitely is a time you should go talk to your lender and see what solution they come up with to stop foreclosure. Since they are more experienced with these types of situations that you are, they have a good idea of what can be done for different situations.

Sometimes unexpected expenses crop up and are quite costly. If your car breaks down for example, maybe it can be fixed or maybe not. If not, you are looking at having to purchase another one. If it can be fixed but the repair is going to be expensive, this is money that you were not planning to have to spend.

Ideally, everyone should have a savings account that they try to add to on a regular basis. However, that is not always possible when struggling to make ends meet today.

Another solution to help you stop foreclosure is loan modification. This can be done by the interest rate you are paying being lowered to reduce monthly payments so that you can afford them. Ideally, this would be the best method to stop foreclosure.

These are only a few of the many solutions to help you stop foreclosure. As serious as the problem is, there are numerous resolutions if you start early enough by either talking to your lender or to a credit counselor.