A short sale is what occurs when a house is sold for less than what is owed on the mortgage. The short sale is often used as an alternative to foreclosure, in which the bank takes your house and you’re responsible for the difference between what is owed on the mortgage and how much the house sells for. What is the difference between a short sale and a foreclosure? The main difference is that in short sales, you’re not responsible for paying off the difference. Let’s say you still owe $400,000.00 in mortgage payments and the house only sells for $300,000.00. The $100,000.00 that you owe the lender gets written as a tax write-off.
Some homeowners regard the short sale as a method of getting off scot-free. Many are aware of the drastic effects of foreclosure, especially on one’s credit. However, the short sale effect on credit is almost as bad. By short-selling your house, you could experience a sharp credit decrease of 200-300 points! At that point, you’d be in desperate need of credit repair.
How does a short sale affect your credit? In calculating the short sale effects on credit, you must consider the fact that people frequently short-sell their homes because of a series of missed mortgage payments. Delinquencies on credit reports are what cause major damage. Those delinquencies will stay on your credit report for up to seven years, whether you’ve experienced a short sale or foreclosure.
One scenario in which the effects of short sale on credit are minimal is when you opt for a voluntary short sale. This is when you want to sell your house and you’ve been keeping up with your payments, but you’re forced to sell the house for less than what is owed on the property. In a case of that sort, you promise to pay back the lender for the difference between what is owed the house’s selling price. In theory, it’s like taking out an additional loan.
The short sale impact on credit is enormous with the involuntary short sale scenario, because you’ve shown that you’re incapable of paying back the lenders. The lenders generally analyze the reason you can’t make your mortgage payments before going through with the short sell. In most cases, lenders will allow the homeowner/seller six months before the bank forecloses upon the home. Even if the house does get sold within that time frame, every short sale has tax consequences. Though you may have gotten away with not paying off the $100,000.00 you owe the lenders, that money will be counted as additional income on your tax return. You will be charged for that “additional income.”
Every once in a while, you could avoid short sale credit damage by convincing your lender into not sending negative reports to your credit bureaus, but those cases are few and far between. Short sales often show up as pre-foreclosures on
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