You Decide Realty · Short Sale & Foreclosure Help Center
A brokerage writing this page has an obvious incentive to steer you toward a sale. So we put the sale options last, on purpose.
Most homeowners who call us have been told about two possibilities: “loan modification” and “foreclosure.” There are at least ten. Some are better than others, several have deadlines, and the right one depends on a question nobody has asked you yet: do you want to keep this house, and can the math actually support it?
If you want to keep the home and can sustain a payment: reinstatement, forbearance, repayment plan, payment deferral, loan modification, or a partial claim. If you need time and leverage: foreclosure mediation, which for an owner-occupant must be elected within 30 days of the Notice of Default. If you have equity: sell it normally and keep the difference — that beats everything else on this page. If you are underwater and leaving: short sale, then deed-in-lieu. And if the debt problem is bigger than the house: talk to a bankruptcy attorney, because filing stops a foreclosure sale immediately.
Nevada’s seriously-underwater rate was 2.1% of all mortgaged homes in Q1 2026 — lower than 39 other states, and well under the 3.2% national figure. That is the whole-market number, not the number for homeowners in default, who are more likely to be underwater than the market as a whole. But it does mean equity is common in this valley right now, and it is the first thing to check. If you have equity, you do not need a short sale, a modification, or any of this: list it, sell it, pay the loan in full, and keep the difference. Your credit is untouched. Anyone who steers an equity seller into a short sale is not working for that seller.
Under 12 CFR 1024.41, your servicer must acknowledge a loss-mitigation application within 5 days and evaluate a complete one within 30 days — and cannot proceed with foreclosure while a complete application is pending. That anti-dual-tracking protection only exists once your file is complete. An incomplete package does not start any clock, which is why so many homeowners feel like their paperwork vanished. Use the checklist →
Nevada gives an owner-occupant the right to sit across a table from the lender, with a neutral mediator, before the sale can proceed. It costs a nominal court filing fee. It buys time. And it puts the lender in a room where it has to actually respond.
You must elect it within 30 days after service of the Notice of Default by filing a petition with the district court. NRS 107.086(3) The trustee is required to send you a form on which you may waive it — do not return that form without understanding what you are giving up.
Eligibility is generally: a recently recorded Notice of Default, the property is your owner-occupied primary residence, and no open bankruptcy. The program is administered by Home Means Nevada, Inc.; mediators are appointed by the Nevada Supreme Court’s Administrative Office of the Courts. Before a sale can proceed, the trustee must record a certificate from Home Means Nevada stating either that no mediation is required or that mediation has been completed.
Articles saying the Nevada Foreclosure Mediation Program is shutting down are describing a 2017 sunset that Senate Bill 490 repealed when it made the program permanent. A 2023 bill to eliminate it died in the Assembly, and the Administrative Office of the Courts was still recruiting mediators for the 2026 cycle. It is running.
A great deal of what you will find online about foreclosure help is describing programs that no longer exist. If someone is offering you any of these in 2026, they are years out of date at best:
Nevada’s Attorney General specifically lists scammers claiming affiliation with defunct federal programs as a foreclosure fraud pattern. If a company is selling you HAMP in 2026, that is your answer. More red flags →
Questions we get every week
It depends on one question: do you want to keep the home and can the math support it? If yes, the options in rough order are reinstatement, payment deferral, loan modification, and a partial claim — a deferral or partial claim moves the arrears to the back of the loan with no interest and no monthly payment, which is often the best available outcome and is badly underused. If you are leaving and have equity, sell normally and keep the proceeds. If you are underwater and leaving, a short sale with a negotiated deficiency waiver is usually better than a deed-in-lieu, and both are better than letting it foreclose.
A payment deferral moves your missed payments to the end of the loan as a non-interest-bearing balance due at payoff, sale, or refinance. Your interest rate and monthly payment do not change. A modification permanently changes the loan terms — typically the rate, the term, or both — and usually requires a trial payment period first. Deferral is the better outcome when your hardship is over and you can resume the original payment; modification is for when you cannot.
Filing triggers an automatic stay that stops a scheduled foreclosure sale immediately, and a Chapter 13 plan can cure mortgage arrears over time. Whether that is the right move for you is a legal and financial question for a bankruptcy attorney, not a real estate brokerage. One point worth raising with counsel: debt discharged in a bankruptcy is fully excluded from taxable income under IRC § 108(a)(1)(A), while forgiven debt in a short sale outside bankruptcy is not — and the principal residence exclusion expired for discharges after December 31, 2025.
This is the most common failure point in the entire process, and it has a regulatory explanation. Under 12 CFR 1024.41, the servicer's 30-day evaluation deadline and the anti-dual-tracking protection both attach only to a complete loss-mitigation application. An incomplete file starts no clock and provides no protection. Get the servicer's exact document list in writing, submit everything at once, keep proof of transmission, and follow up in writing. Our document checklist covers what is usually required.
Yes. The Nevada Homeowner's Bill of Rights expressly protects a borrower's right to pursue multiple foreclosure prevention alternatives — NRS 107.470. Practically, that means you can be seeking a modification while also listing the property, which is exactly what we recommend for many homeowners: pursue retention and prepare an exit at the same time, and take whichever lands first. Note that under NRS 107.460 these protections do not apply to a financial institution that foreclosed on 100 or fewer Nevada owner-occupied properties in its prior reporting period.
Once a Nevada trustee’s sale is held, title vests in the purchaser with no right of redemption — there is no undo. But until then, an owner-occupant’s right to reinstate generally runs to five days before the sale, and a pending offer is a reason to ask for a postponement.
702-843-0044Ken Calder · Nevada Broker B.1001776 · Speak to a licensed broker, not a call center.
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No judgment, no sales pitch, and no pressure to list anything. If the right answer is a loan modification, a bankruptcy attorney, or a HUD counselor instead of us, that is what we will say. We are a licensed Nevada brokerage, not a foreclosure rescue company — and we never charge a homeowner a fee to look at their situation.
We do not publish a figure, a deadline, or a statute we have not read. Every claim above traces to one of these. If you find something here that is out of date, tell us and we will fix it and re-stamp the page.