Mortgage and Insurance

It has been a bewildering year as homeowners nationwide have had to deal with massive job losses, the insolvency of banks and continued tidal waves of imminent foreclosures.

The reports coming out of Washington for the last 12 months attest to the brutal facts that an insignificant amount of homeowners facing foreclosure received mortgage assistance.

This has made the Obama administration to look continuously for a solution for the remaining 96 percent of homeowners already in foreclosure. This obviously doesn’t include future foreclosure victims in 2010 and 2011.

Reports show that currently there are 2 million housing entities in the United States in foreclosure or bank-owned with more surely to follow.

The government’s current solutions have been futile at saving homes from this foreclosure epidemic and that there is an anticipated 8 million foreclosures looming on the horizon as the economy falters according to Citigroup analysts.

What does this have to do with short sales? Well, according to the National Association of Realtors, approximately 500,000 transactions in 2009 were short sales which represented almost 10 percent of all home sales.

Not surprising is the attitude adjustment from banks who are beginning to go along with short sales in increasing numbers, Bloomberg.com says.

The St. Louis Refinancing Group and the local lending community also reported that short sales almost tripled by 40,000 in the first 2 quarters of 2009 compared to the same time frame in 2008.

This is later contrasted by the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency reporting 25 foreclosures started or completed for each filed short sale.

“It’s really finally dawning on banks that they’re better off with a short sale. I think banks were in denial,” as Mr. Richard Green, the director of the Lusk Center for Real Estate at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles portrays.

Let’s also consider the unrealized benefits for homeowners doing a proper short sale. They actually retain control of the sale just like any other home sale not to mention relieving themselves of any social stigma associated with a foreclosure.

But what if one wants to purchase another home. Would a short sale derail this future action? If payments were never 30 days late and no pay back was required by the lender, Fannie Mae guidelines may allow you to buy another home immediately or no longer than 3 years.

The worst case scenario involving a short sale is if you were behind on your mortgage payment by 30 days or more, you and your family may indeed qualify to buy a future Fannie Mae backed mortgage possibly within two years.

But if foreclosure was unavoidable, you may qualify to buy another home within five years if the home was your primary residence with included restrictions. And if there were no restrictions in place, the wait is seven years.

And for investors who do not occupy the home as their primary residence would have to wait 7 years for a Fannie Mae insured loan.

With political pressures escalating from demanding consumers in the mortgage arena, the Obama administration has had no choice but to champion the short sale as a feasible alternative to foreclosure.

In addition, the Treasury Department has recently laid out finalized guidelines for carrying out short sales under the Making Homes Affordable program.

The administration has also appealed to participating servicers under the new Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternative (HAFA) program to embrace the short sale as a substitute to foreclosure.

This new program known as HAFA was executed to assist distressed homeowners who were not able to qualify for a temporary or permanent loan modification under the (HAMP) Home Affordable Modification Program.

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