I get asked this question a lot: "Do I have to miss a payment on my mortgage to qualify for a short sale?"
The short answer is maybe, but probably not.
It's a very common misconception that you MUST miss a payment to qualify for a short sale, or that in order to qualify for a short sale you need to miss several mortgage payments. It simply isn't true.
I have successfully closed and negotiated hundreds of short sales and most of them never missed a mortgage payment at all. Why damage your credit if you don't have to? My number one goal is to look out for the homeowner's credit WHILE trying to short sale their home. The truth is that there are ways to prove your hardship without missing any mortgage payments, because not all hardships are financial. There are also situational hardships, employment hardships and medical hardships, just to name a few.
For example, let's say that a homeowner's employer is relocating him. This is a great example of a hardship that is not financial at all (although if he doesn't relocate, the homeowner will be in a financial hardship shortly from having lost his job!). For this reason, MOST lenders will allow a short sale (even if the hardship is financial) to be processed and approved as long as the hardship is documented in other ways, such as paystubs, expense worksheets, etc.
Note the word "MOST" in the above paragraph... MOST lenders will allow a short sale with no missed payments. But a few will not. There are times when the lenders request that homeowner be 30 or 60 days delinquent for the short sale to be approved. This happens very rarely and affects the homeowner's credit minimally, in comparison to missing 6+ months of mortgage payments, simply because they heard that's the only way to get the short sale approved.
Expert short sale processors should know this, and should know how to prepare the homeowners for it so that it affects them as minimally as possible.
There are a lot of misconceptions about short sales. Do your research! If you have questions about selling your home, feel free to give us a call and chat. We'd love to see if we can help!