by Atlanta Short Sale Agent on April 10, 2010
I’ve been fielding calls about the HAFA program for the last month and it’s so unfortunate that the “powers that be” decided to market this program so heavily but did not decide to use their “power” to inform the public. Here’s a quick run down of the qualifications:
- You must be 60 days behind
- Your home must be owner occupied (you can move out due to job transfer but not to “move up”)
- You must have gotten your loan before January 1, 2009
But the biggest kicker here is that the banks are doing this VOLUNTARILY! Meaning they don’t have to do this, so if you have the following types of loans, you are out of luck:
- FHA
- Fannie Mae (which actually administers HAFA!)
- Freddie Mac
- VA
- Ginny Mae
- Some Private Label loans
That’s about 70% of the loans out there. When you get a loan at Bank of America for example, they sell the loan to an investor and keep the rights to collect the payment from you. The investor is usually one of these companies above. That’s where the problem is.
We don’t even get to talk about the “move out money” if you have a fannie mae loan.
How do you find out what type of loan you have?
You could simply call your servicer/bank and ask or you can call the institutions themselves and ask.
by Atlanta Short Sale Agent on January 29, 2010
Here’s your scenario:
PMI (Private Mortgage Insurance, also known as Mortgage Insurance) company has a policy on the shorted loan that says they will pay the investor 20% of the loan amount. So if you have a 400K loan, that’s $80K total payout. In order to pay this, the insurance policy has certain things in place to make sure, just like any insurance policy, it’s designed NOT to be paid out. Some of those actually related to short sales.
In a short sale, the investor would like to get the insurance to cover their loss on this. In most cases, 20% of the total loan PLUS whatever the investor gets through REO Sale = MORE THAN YOUR SHORT SALE.
That’s a big fail.
This is why you see Bank of America short sales getting so many complaints. The investor is saying, “I want to help you, but based on my due diligence and my insurance policy, you need to bring another 20K to the table.” Dead deal.
