Shawn Polston here of TucsonShortSale.com and Keller William’s Southern Arizona in Tucson. Today I wanted to talk about FHA and VA short sales. Compared to other "regular" short sales, these are completely different. There are certain nuances to doing these short sales and because of this I wanted to give you a few pointers and questions for when you’re looking around for someone to handle your short sale transaction should you have this type of loan. Being government loans, they’re actually not referred to as short sales.
With VA loans they are referred to as a compromise sale and with FHA loans they are called pre-foreclosure sale program. One of the major things with a VA short sale is that they will give the borrower up to $1500 in relocation assistance, however they don’t automatically do it. Your agent has to make the request, otherwise you won’t get it. The other thing about a VA short sale, you can no longer have another VA mortgage unless you pay them back for the short sale. This doesn’t mean that you can never get another mortgage, you just lose your VA eligibility until you pay them back for the home that you had to do a short sale on. If you’ve got a VA loan and you’re considering a short sale, make sure whoever you are working with is aware of these things.
For FHA loans, the process is quite similar. When you get approved into their pre-foreclosure sale program, they give you an automatic $1000 if you complete the short sale within the first 60 days and then $750 if you complete it within 120 days. With FHA short sales there is no obligation to repay them to qualify for another FHA loan in the future. There are some other intricacies to getting those short sales done, but I just wanted to make sure that you knew the major points of these two different types should you be contemplating a short sale with one of these loans. If you have any further questions about FHA, VA, or traditional short sales, please contact us.