What is a "Short Sale?"
Throughout the past couple years, the term short sale has been thrown around quite a bit, as if everyone already knows what it means. Well, I run into people every week that ask me, what is a short sale? So, I thought I'd take a minute to define it for everyone.
A short sale is when a home owner "needs" to sell their home and find themselves upside down in regards to their mortgage, basically meaning; they owe more than what they could sell it for. With many areas in the mid-west seeing as much as a 30% decline in home values the past 5 years, many homeowners who bought with low down payment loans are finding themselves in this situation.
Historically, many home owners felt their only way out of that situation was foreclosure, since they had never heard of a short sale before and if they had, many banks weren't that friendly to the concept of a short sale early on. That is changing, and we're seeing many banks encouraging the short sale route vs. foreclosure, because it's better for them and it's better for the homeowners credit and financial outlook.
Although there's specific criteria to qualify for a short sale, banks and government regulationsare making the process simpler and more efficient every day. Being a CDPE, I'm specifically trained to make that process even easier, so feel free to contact me for a no obligation confidential consultaion.