For South Carolina homeowners, not being able to make mortgage payments is often a frightening experience. It is one thing to have to go to court over an unpaid credit card bill, but the possibility of losing one's home can cause significant anxiety.
Foreclosure options
How much does bankruptcy actually lower a credit score?
When South Carolina residents file for bankruptcy, their credit score is negatively affected. How much of a hit is taken depends upon certain factors.
Commercial bankruptcies soar as personal filings fall
South Carolina residents may have been part of bankruptcy filings that soared in 2009 as individuals and businesses around the country began to feel the full impact of the financial crisis. Filings have been going down in recent years, but analysts are now saying that this decline is showing signs of leveling off. The American Bankruptcy Institute analyzes Chapter 7, Chapter 13 and Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings using information provided by Epiq Systems Inc., and data for the first quarter of 2016 shows that commercial bankruptcies were up by nearly 25 percent compared to the same period in 2015.
Debt relief for students of fraudulent for-profit colleges
South Carolina residents may recall that the prominent for-profit higher education company Corinthian Colleges filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in May 2015. In a March 25 speech, the U.S. Secretary of Education said that investigations had linked 91 of the troubled educator's campuses with fraud, which observers hope will make it easier for its former students to apply for debt relief.
