Short Sale Guidelines From Fannie Mae – Updated

Today, after 2 months of back & forth phone calls with Fannie Mae, I finally have confirmation “direct from the horse’s mouth” about buying a property after a short sale.

24 months from the closing date of a short sale, assuming the buyer has kept current on all additional loans, credit cards, etc. and buyer meets all Fannie Mae underwriting criteria, Fannie Mae may purchase the loan from the lender.

Now, this isn’t something new and it was posted in Fannie Mae’s August 2008 guidelines HOWEVER there has been a lot of speculation about whether this is still current information (it is) as well as brings light to the fallacy of buying another property immediately.

Technically speaking, you can buy another home after a short sale whenever you’d like!  You can buy it a week later, a month later, an hour later, or even sign the closing docs for your short sale and then turn your chair around and sign buyer’s documents for another property!

You need to find a lender that will underwrite you first of all and this may be a difficult task.  But if you can find one then you can buy a property whenever they’ll fund you!  Be advised that Fannie Mae will not buy the loan from the lender/servicer however for 24 months so this will probably drastically affect your interest rate and/or terms.

If you have cash you can buy a property without worrying about lender stipulations however it will probably be of high interest to the lender that you just short sold a property with how in the heck you have all this cash to buy a new house when you just pleaded poverty to get them to approve your short sale.

I don’t want to get into mortgage fraud or perjury here and I don’t really know how the lender would find out that you just bought another property but this is a morality issue that I’m not going to even discuss.  Be careful what you do, cross all your T’s & dot your i’s and stay within the bounds of legality — that’s our advice!

For more information about the Arizona short sale process please visit us on the web at http://www.AzHomeHelp.com or call one of our consultants at (480) 241-4406.

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