How Long Does A Short Sale Take?

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Categories: Loudoun Neighborhoods Posted on April 7th, 2010

One of the most asked question during the short sale process is how long it will take. We have all heard the horror stories of short sales taking over a year to be processed and shiver at the thought of waiting that long.

If you ask 100 people you will get… well, a lot of answers. However, as an agent who has actually processed short sales, I have advised my clients to expect on average around 90 days. This time frame can vary based upon how many banks are involved, which banks are involved, and how long it takes the home to sell.

What Takes So Long?

Originally, banks were understaffed to handle the amount of short sales being presented to them. They did not have a streamlined process to handle the work load along with the thousands of files from across the country. I recently heard a Bank Of America VP share that they have added 100,000 employees to their short sale department.

Secondly, un-experienced short sale agents were sending in incomplete short sale packages. These files cause major delays in the decision making process.

Thirdly, there are multiple decision makers in the process that must approve or dissaprove of the sale. This cannot happen in a moments notice.

Have Things Changed?

With the new HAFA short sale program that assists many sellers who own NON Fannie/ Freddie loans, this process will be much quicker for most. Here is the basic timeline…

Servicer considers borrower (the seller) for HAFA within 30 days.

Servicer gives borrower 14 days to indicated interest by signing and returning SSA form.

Borrower has 120 days to find buyer.

After contract, borrower has 3 days to submit the RASS form to servicer.

Servicer must indicate approval or dissaproval of the sales offer within 10 days.

Borrower has 45 days to close.

In other words, once a seller has an offer on their property they will know if the bank approves of it or not within a 13 day period! Is that quick enough?

Get Started!

original post at dullesshortsales

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 at 10:23 AM and is filed under Loudoun Neighborhoods. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.