Behind on the Mortgage in Goshen? Start Here, Not at the Auction

The Goshen Help Most People Skip

If you have a foreclosure notice on a Goshen house, the court side of it — where the case is filed, how long Indiana gives you, when a sheriff's sale can be set — is covered on our Elkhart County foreclosure page. This page is about the parts that are handled by people in Goshen itself, which is where the useful early moves are.

The first is counseling you do not have to leave town for. LaCasa of Goshen, Inc., at 202 N. Cottage Ave., is listed in HUD's directory of approved housing counseling agencies, and the services it is approved for include mortgage delinquency and default resolution counseling. HUD lists the agency as counseling in both English and Spanish. A counselor can review your budget, talk to the servicer about a modification or repayment plan, and tell you honestly whether keeping the house is realistic. It costs you nothing.

The second is the township trustee. Township assistance covers things like rent, utilities, food and prescriptions — not mortgage arrears directly — but if a shutoff notice or a pharmacy bill is what is eating the payment, clearing it can free enough money to matter. The Elkhart Township Trustee's office is at 106 N. 5th St. Goshen stretches across more than one township, so confirm which trustee covers your address before you go.

Don't Move Out and Leave It

A lot of families, once the letters start, decide the house is already gone and move somewhere cheaper while the case runs. In Goshen that is often the most expensive thing you can do.

Until a sheriff's sale actually happens you are still the owner of record, and the City of Goshen enforces its Neighborhood Preservation Ordinance against owners of record. The city code requires the doors, windows and basement entrances of a vacant structure to be kept secured. When they are not — a back door left unlocked, a broken window, signs of people getting in — the City Building Commissioner can issue an order requiring repairs, and the Board of Public Works & Safety holds review hearings on those orders.

The Board's own minutes show how this plays out. At a November 2025 hearing it reviewed an order on a Goshen house the city's attorney described as being in foreclosure and apparently abandoned by an owner who had moved away. The options the Board can take include affirming the order, imposing a civil penalty for willful failure to comply, and authorizing legal action such as a receivership.

What a Goshen Sale Has to Pay Off

When a house in foreclosure sells, the title company collects a payoff figure from the lender and pays it at closing, with anything left over going to you. In Goshen there are usually a couple of city items to add to that list, and it helps to know about them before the settlement statement arrives.

• City sewer charges. Under Indiana's municipal sewage works law, unpaid sewer fees can become a lien on the property once notice is filed with the county recorder — and that lien ranks ahead of everything except property taxes, including your mortgage. Goshen's Board of Public Works has reported sending old balances to collections and to sewer liens.
• A final water and sewer bill. The city's billing office on South 5th Street publishes instructions for closing an account, and any final balance is settled when the house sells.
• Any civil penalty or city repair cost from a code order, if one was issued while the house sat.
• Property tax arrears, which the county collects — our Elkhart County tax sale and foreclosure guide covers that side.

None of these stop a sale. They just come out of the proceeds, so the earlier they are known, the fewer surprises there are on closing day.

Keep Paper on Everything

Whatever route you take, keep a simple file: every letter from the servicer, the counselor's notes, any notice from the city and your most recent water and sewer statement. When a Goshen house changes hands under time pressure, the delays almost always come from a missing document rather than a missing buyer.

If English is not the language you are most comfortable handling legal paperwork in, say so at the start. LaCasa's HUD listing shows Spanish-language counseling, and the City of Goshen publishes its new-customer utility information in Spanish as well as English. Understanding exactly what you are signing matters more than signing quickly.

Where Selling Fits for a Goshen Homeowner

Counseling first is the right order for most people. Selling becomes the better answer when the numbers from that counseling session do not close the gap, when the house has equity that an auction would hand to someone else, or when you have already left and the property is becoming a liability under city code.

What we do is simple: look at the house, put a written cash offer in front of you within a day, and, if you accept, close on a date that beats the sale — typically in one to two weeks. The lender, the city charges and the closing costs are paid from our funds at closing. You do not repair, clean or show anything.

If you want the bigger picture of selling a house in Goshen — older housing, rentals, when a listing would net you more — the city page covers it. And if the Indiana legal process is what you are unsure about, our South Bend foreclosure page walks through it in detail.

Goshen Foreclosure Help