Video Transcript:

GABE DEL RIO (Senior Vice President, Community Housing Works): A loan modification is when your lender or servicer, and the servicer is the person who takes your bills.  It's important to understand that may not be your lender.  But they are the person responsible for handling any servicing and changes in the future. So at any point if you make changes to the terms of your loan, which would be the length of time that you're making the payments, the payment itself, the interest rate, any of the whether it's adjustable or fixed, any of those would be terms of your loan, and when you make any change to the original loan that you signed, which would be on your note and your deed in the state of California, then that would be a modification of that loan.  So when we talk about making those modifications happen, we're generally talking about lowering the payment in some way.  That can be done by increasing the term of the loan,  it can be done by decreasing the payments, and then the third option which happens under the treasury plan, would be to take a piece of the balance, and put it on forbearance.  Which means you don't pay it until X date.  A lot of times that would may be due on sale.  So you'll pay it if you sell the home, and then you'll pay the rest of that balance back.  

SHARON HEILBRUNN (KPBS reporter): If you missed or are about to miss a home payment, the problem won't go away.  The time to act is now.  There are trusted community resources available to help, but you have to ask.  KPBS partner 211 San Diego can connect you with the resources you need.  You can call 211, or log on to kpbs.org/mortgage crisis.  We're facing the mortgage crisis together.