Six options, in depth.

Reinstatement is the path back to where you were before. You catch up on the missed payments, the late fees, and the lender’s costs — all paid in a single lump sum within the cure period that follows the Notice of Default. The default goes away. The loan resumes on its original terms. You keep the home.

The cure period in California is roughly 90 days from the Notice of Default, sometimes longer depending on the lender. You don’t need a real estate agent for this one. What you need is the exact reinstatement number from the lender, in writing, and a way to get the funds in hand before the deadline.

If this is the path you’re considering, I’ll refer you to a HUD-approved housing counselor. The counseling is free and neutral. They’ll walk through the numbers with you and confirm whether reinstatement actually works in your situation before you commit to it.

A loan modification is a renegotiated mortgage. The lender agrees to change the terms of the existing loan — a lower monthly payment, a longer term, a temporarily reduced interest rate, or a forbearance that pauses payments for a defined period. The default comes off the file. You stay in the home.

Lenders modify loans when modification costs them less than foreclosure does. That math depends on your equity, your income, and what your loan is worth on the secondary market. Some loans modify easily; others don’t modify at all. You don’t know which one you have until you ask, with the right documentation, through the right channel.

I refer you to a HUD-approved housing counselor or a real-estate attorney for this conversation. They handle the paperwork side. I’m happy to stay in the loop and walk through any sale scenarios in parallel if you want a Plan B running while the modification request is in review.

This is a normal open-market listing — MLS, photos, the broker network, public showings, the works — with one extra ingredient: Compass Concierge fronts up to $50,000 in pre-list prep. Paint, light remodel, staging, cleanup. No interest. Recouped at closing out of the sale proceeds.

The reason this matters in a pre-foreclosure context is that a well-prepared home almost always nets you more than an as-is one, even after you pay back the Concierge funds. If you have equity and you have enough time to do the prep and run a normal marketing window, this is usually the path that puts the most cash in your pocket at the end.

My sister companies, GoWest Home Design and GoWest Staging, handle the prep work directly. I run the listing, the offers, the escrow, and the close. The goal is a clean sale at a price that pays off the lender, the costs, and leaves you with what equity remains.

An off-market sale runs through Compass’s Private Exclusive program — a private sale to a buyer I bring you directly, with no MLS listing, no public marketing, no open houses, no sign in the yard. The buyer comes from my network of investors and end-users actively looking for homes in the area but willing to transact quietly. If you want a wider but still controlled audience, the next phase is Coming Soon: the home is marketed publicly as forthcoming, with a defined window before it goes live on the MLS — useful when you want some price-discovery without committing to a full open-market launch.

The trade-off is straightforward. You usually net a bit less than a traditional listing would produce, because you’re skipping the open bidding that competitive marketing creates. In exchange, you get speed, discretion, and a transaction that almost no one outside your household needs to know about.

I source the buyer, negotiate the price, manage the contract, and run the close. The neighbors don’t find out from a sign in the yard. Your kids don’t come home to a lockbox on the door. For some situations, that’s worth more than the last few percent on the price.

A short sale is a sale of the home for less than what’s owed on the mortgage, with the lender’s written approval to accept the shortfall instead of foreclosing. The home goes on the market like any other listing. Once you have an accepted offer, the lender reviews the file and either approves the price or counters it.

The process typically takes 60 to 120 days, sometimes longer if there are multiple liens or a complicated loan structure. A short sale does show up on your credit, but the impact is usually less severe and shorter-lived than a completed foreclosure. The home is sold; the lien is released; the lender writes off the shortfall.

I run the listing and coordinate the lender-side package — the hardship letter, the financials, the offer submission, the counter negotiations — alongside your housing counselor or attorney. This is one of the more paperwork-intensive paths, but it’s often the right one when you owe more than the home is worth.

This is the only one of the six where my company buys the home directly. The GoWest Group makes a cash offer, closes in roughly ten days, sends a single general contractor through for a walkthrough — that’s the only inspection — and takes the home as-is. No staging, no prep, no showings, no financing contingencies.

The trade-off is price. A direct cash offer usually nets you less than a fully prepared traditional listing would, because the buyer (in this case, my company) is taking on the prep work, the carrying costs, and the resale risk. I’m upfront about that number when I make the offer — you see what each path is likely to net, side by side, and you decide.

This is a GoWest Group product, not a Compass service. The reason it exists is that some pre-foreclosure situations don’t have enough runway for a traditional sale, and the alternative is letting the home go to auction for less than a cash offer would pay. When that’s the choice, the cash offer is usually the better one.

Two more paths exist that don’t fall into the six above: a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure, where you voluntarily transfer the deed back to the lender in exchange for a release from the debt, and Chapter 13 bankruptcy, which can halt a foreclosure and restructure your debts under court supervision.

I don’t handle either of these myself. If one of them looks like it might fit your situation, I’ll refer you to a real-estate attorney first. The attorney conversation is the right starting point — not a real estate agent’s.