It’s your home. It’s the place you retreat to every night after facing a not-always-kind world. It’s the place where you house your family, maybe children and a pet. You don’t want to lose it to a foreclosure.

But if the terms of your home loan are unmanageable – due to loss of income, other unexpected costs, or an adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) that is out of sight – you may very well be distressed. If the bank has begun foreclosure proceedings, you can’t help but panic.  It’s your home.

Dealing with large banks – particularly lenders who are not in a building down your street, but are in far away places that you only talk to on the telephone – can only add to your stress. The tangle of voice mail, being put on hold, then talking to a distant bureaucrat who may not seem helpful, all make the process almost impossible.

This is why there are third parties who are helping thousands of homeowners stop foreclosure and negotiate better loan terms. They are loan modification professionals.  They are lawyers and banking finance experts who know the lender’s hot spots – what the lender’s position is. They know the lender really doesn’t want to take possession of your house. It’s usually a loser for them. And, they then lose a customer. When the loan modification specialist can demonstrate to the bank that you, the borrower, would be able to keep up monthly payments but at reduced rates, almost always the bank will agree to recasting the loan terms.

A reputable loan modification firm charges about one month’s house payment, and will return 100% of the fee if they are not successful (they generally can predict success with about 90 percent accuracy).

So of course staying in your home is an emotional experience. But a cool headed professional is who you need to make sure the negotiation is successful.

Maybe you bought a fixer-upper home because you’re handy.  Perhaps you’re good at paint, and know that a good coat of well-selected colors can brighten up any house and any room.

But if your mortgage is what needs fixing – perhaps you have to stop a loan foreclosure – it’s not a weekend project for non-professionals. A difficult, distressed mortgage is the work for professionals, people with the right training and expertise.

First, most people don’t know they can hire an intermediary to work with their mortgage lender. You can — they’re called loan modification specialists. Of course most of us deal with someone in a phone bank to discuss late payments, difficulties, current interest rates, etc., but when you’re trying to recast the terms of your mortgage, you need to talk to someone at a higher level.  Who, and how do you get there? Once you get someone on the phone, how do you get and keep their attention? The average bank home loan officer has 700 cases to work on. They need to be dealt with in a professional, cut-to-the-quick way.

Loan modification intermediaries know lenders – many of them were bankers themselves in the past. Others are real estate and finance attorneys, applying their expertise to your financial and housing well being. When they take on a case, they do so with more than 90 percent confidence they will succeed (they’ll ask preliminary questions to ferret out if your case can be made convincingly). Then they approach your mortgage bank with background knowledge on the bank itself — how expensive would it be for the bank to foreclose on your property? And under what terms, more favorable now to the homeowner, will the lender agree to adjusting the mortgage? It’s a matter of dollars and cents, but it’s also about knowing what to say and to whom.

If you engage a loan modification professional, your chances are greater that you’ll stay in your home — and be able to continue those Do-It-Yourself projects that ultimately add value to the home.