How much time do you actually have?

You miss payments. The servicer sends letters and, in most cases, a notice of default giving you a window to bring the loan current. Nothing has been filed in court. Nobody can take your house at this stage. This is also when your name starts appearing on the lists that wholesalers buy, which is why the calls begin long before there is any real deadline.

Time available: months, usually.

Florida is a judicial foreclosure state, which means the lender has to sue you and win. When they file, they record a lis pendens - a public notice that the property is in litigation. That recording is what triggers the flood of letters, door knocks and texts. It is not a deadline. It is a filing.

Time available: the case has only just started.

Once you are formally served, you have 20 days to file a written response with the court. This is the single most important date in the whole process, and it is the one most homeowners miss. If you file nothing, the lender can ask for a default judgment and the case moves fast. If you respond, it does not.

Time available: 20 days to respond. Then months.

The lender usually moves for summary judgment. If they win, the judge enters a final judgment of foreclosure and, in that same judgment, sets the sale date. Until this happens, no auction date exists. Anyone telling you there is an auction date before there is a judgment is either confused or lying to you.

Time available: often many months from filing to judgment.

The judgment directs the clerk to sell the property at public sale on a specified day, not less than 20 days and not more than 35 days after the judgment date. It can be later if the lender's attorney agrees to it. In the Tampa Bay counties, these sales are held online.

Time available: 20 to 35 days after judgment.

Under Florida's right of redemption, at any time before the later of the clerk filing the certificate of sale or the time stated in the judgment, you can cure the debt and stop the sale by paying what the judgment says you owe, plus the lender's reasonable costs. A closing that pays off the judgment does exactly this. That is why a properly marketed sale, run early enough, beats a fire sale.

Time available: until the certificate of sale is filed.

If no objections are filed within 10 days of the certificate of sale, the clerk issues a certificate of title, and at that point the sale is confirmed and title passes. If the property sold for more than the judgment, there may be money left over that belongs to you rather than to the lender - and there are companies that will try to get you to sign that away. Ask an attorney before you sign anything about surplus funds.

Time available: 10 days to object.