Michigan Foreclosure Law
The state of Michigan utilizes two forms of foreclosures, the judicial proceedings and the non-judicial type or the so-called foreclosure by advertisement. The duration of such foreclosure is around sixty-days.
Judicial Foreclosure
A mortgage may be foreclosed by filing a lawsuit in the Michigan circuit court. The court may order the property sold six months after the initial filing of the lawsuit. The property will be sold by the circuit court commissioner or any other person who is appointed by the court to conduct the sale. After the sale, the borrower has six months to redeem.
Foreclosure by Advertisement
As long as the mortgage is not held by the Michigan state housing development authority, the property with a power of sale clause and has arrear payments may be foreclosed on through a non-judicial foreclosure by advertisement. Nonpayment of any installment of a mortgage constitutes a separate act which justifies foreclosure.
The notice of sale has to be published in a local newspaper for four consecutive weeks, once each week and fifteen days after its publication, a foreclosure notice, duly certified must be posted in an area that could be viewed without impediments on the mentioned site at the notice of sale.
The sale should be conducted at the courthouse where the mortgage claim was filed between the hours of 9 o’clock "in the forenoon" and 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Individuals or duly designated persons by the court, a sheriff or a deputy sheriff, should conduct the sale and auction the property to the highest bidder. The sale may be adjourned from time to time by posting a notice of such adjournment at the time and place where the sale would otherwise have been made. Any adjournment for more than a week must also be published in the same newspaper as the original notice, within 10 days from the date the sale was adjourned, and again once per week for each week the sale is adjourned.
A deed should be executed and delivered by the officer or person conducting the sale to the highest bidder at the foreclosure sale. The deed must specify the last date by which the borrower can redeem the property. The deed must be recorded within 20 days after the sale.
Redemption
The borrower could redeem a property with over four units or three acres and has not been abandoned, for a period of one year from the date of the foreclosure sale. If the property has been abandoned, and if the balance is over two-thirds of the original loan, then the redemption period is one month. If the balance is two-thirds or less of the original loan, use one year. If the property is four units or less and does not exceed three acres in size, then two different redemption time periods apply.
Mortgages that originated after 1965, and if the amount
that remains unpaid on the loan is more than two-thirds of the original debt, then the borrower still has six months to redeem.
If the unpaid balance on a mortgage is less than two-thirds of the original debt, then the borrower has only three months to redeem if the property has been abandoned.
Abandonment
Abandonment shall be presumed, in residential properties with four units or less, or three acres or less, after a personal inspection resulted to negative occupants and the borrower fails to respond to notices
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