A trustee can sell your home without ever filing a lawsuit. But California wraps that power in the Homeowner Bill of Rights — dual tracking is banned, you get a named point of contact, and unusually, you can sue to stop a sale before it happens rather than after.
Not sure what date to put in? Tell us which paper you were sent and we will work the timeline out backwards from it.
Each is a different statute.
When you first fell behind.
Local pace is the variable.
Past steps fade out.
FHA and VA add steps.
Purchase money cannot produce a deficiency.
The three-month reinstatement window after a notice of default is the most valuable thing California gives you — pay only the arrears, not the whole loan. It closes five business days before the sale.
Rights that exist because the property is in Florida, whatever a servicer tells you on the phone.
Regional legal aid programmes take foreclosure cases at no cost if you qualify by income. Start at FloridaLawHelp.org, which routes you to the programme covering your county.
HUD-approved housing counsellors are free everywhere in the state — 1-800-569-4287. Several circuits also run residential foreclosure mediation; ask the clerk whether yours does.
Anyone who contacts you first, guarantees they can stop the sale for a fee paid up front, or asks you to sign the deed over is running a scam. Never sign a deed to someone promising to save your home.
Verified 8 September 2026 against the 2025 Florida Statutes and the Rules of Civil Procedure. That audit corrected ten items, including a dead citation for the deficiency limitation period, the wrong authority for the writ of possession, and a surplus claim deadline repealed in 2019. Statute text was verified; appellate case law was not, and two items — the paragraph 22 defence and current circuit mediation programmes — rest partly on secondary sources and should be confirmed by a Florida attorney before launch.
Short answers, each one sourced to the statute cited on this page.
The statutory minimum is three months plus twenty days from the recording of the notice of default — roughly 110 to 112 days. Counting from the first missed payment, including the federal 120-day rule and the required pre-recording contact, a typical case runs closer to 330 days.
California is a non-judicial foreclosure state. A trustee sells under a power of sale without a lawsuit, though the Homeowner Bill of Rights gives borrowers enforceable protections including a ban on dual tracking and the right to sue to stop a sale before it happens.
Yes. Civil Code 2924c lets you cure by paying only the arrears plus permitted fees, rather than the entire accelerated balance, at any time until five business days before the sale.
No. There is no redemption after a non-judicial trustee sale in California. That is the trade for the anti-deficiency rules, which bar a deficiency judgment after any power-of-sale foreclosure.
Ten days, not five. The deadline changed on 1 January 2025 under AB 2347. Weekends and court holidays do not count, and service by mail adds five court days.