When homeowners are facing foreclosure, they are in a very vulnerable position. Feelings of anxiety, panic and fear at the possibility of losing their home make them easy targets for foreclosure rescue scams. Here are a couple to watch out for.

The first type of foreclosure rescue scam is the repurchase or lease-back scam. In this scam, a company or person may offer to pay your mortgage and then rent your house back to you. The catch is that you are often asked to sign over the deed to the house. The scammer may promise to resell your house back to you after a specified period of time.

Know that if you sign over the deed to your home, you are giving the scammer total control. He can evict you, jack up your rental payments, sell your home from under you and yes, even cause your home to be foreclosed.

The thing you were trying to avoid can happen because even though you signed over ownership of your house, you are still responsible for mortgage payments. You can bet the con artist won't tell you about that. Once the scammer stops making mortgage payments with your rent money, your lender has the right to start the foreclosure process.

A second type of foreclosure scam is the refinance fraud. Here con artists pretend to be lenders or mortgage brokers and offer to refinance your mortgage so your payments are more affordable. Sounds good, right?

Just be careful what you sign to refinance. You may think you are simply signing papers to finalize a loan. But be sure to read the fine print, or have your lawyer take a look, to be sure you're not actually signing over the deed to your home. If this happens, you lose control just like in the repurchase or lease-back scam described above and you may wind up losing your home.

If you are facing foreclosure, watch out for foreclosure rescue scams. Because unfortunately, if someone is offering something that sounds too good to be true, it probably is.