Mortgage lender Wells Fargo is giving customers a chance to avoid losing their homes.

The company, which merged with Wachovia this year, is offering a workshop Oct. 26-28 for homeowners in the metro Atlanta area in danger of foreclosure, said spokesman Jay Lawrence.

"If you attend the workshop and work with us, we’re not going to move your house to foreclosure," Lawrence said.

Hall County residents are eligible to attend the workshop — at a location that has yet to be determined — and work out options with the mortgage company.

Though the company will not proceed with foreclosure sales until after the workshop, Lawrence said people should go ahead and call.

"We don’t want people to wait until then. We want them to call us," Lawrence said. "The most important thing homeowners can do is to call us."

Lawrence said Wells Fargo has offered a similar program in other locations in the Atlanta area, working to keep customers in their homes.

Lawrence said the company has helped 1,400 homeowners in the Atlanta area avoid foreclosure so far.

"We’ve been working hard on this issue in the greater Atlanta area for months," Lawrence said. "We’re really trying to help."

Lawrence said there are a few options for people who have received a notice of foreclosure sale. Mainly, homeowners may:

• Refinance, or take out a new loan on the property
• Develop a repayment plan
• Modify the terms of the current mortgage

"The idea is to come to the workshop, meet with us face-to-face, discuss the options that are available and if we find an option that may work for the customer we’ll push back the foreclosure date until we can fully explore the option," Lawrence said.

Nearly 400 legal advertisements for foreclosures appeared in The Times in the first week of September.

September foreclosure filings for Hall County may have hit a new record — set in June — and developer foreclosures are the highest they have been in Hall County in recent memory, the Times reported last month.