Wednesday, April 21, 2010

HAFA - Short Sale and Loan Modifications that Work

We've all heard the stories of the family who negotiated with the bank for months on a short sale and the bank makes the buyer and the home owner jump over hundreds of hoops. I was personally involved in one of these about 2 years ago with a Galleria highrise unit that I wanted to purchase. The short version to the story is that the home owner purchased the property for 450k and it was only work 200k. Its funny because I offered the bank 225k (25k more than its worth) and after a year.... 12 months... they finally decided to accept my offer and I had already moved on to greener pastures. The building was an outdated highrise called the Campton on Woodway and Post Oak. Lot's of speculative investors bought in the building after the thing nearly went belly up.

I digress, the Federal government has just finished rolling out the HAFA program which will help families who are trying to sell on a short sale. In an earlier post I mentioned a few of the highlights and I was recently able to share my insights on CBS News with the awesome report Christine Haas. She's interviewed me, on behalf of Zeus Mortgage, for other stories on low rate mortgage, FHA financing, and cash-out refinancing. Here is the recent clip:



http://www.kvue.com/news/Government-program-offers-incentives-to-speed-up-short-sale-process-91699739.html

CBS has an amazing light (camera) guy... obviously, because he shaded the shinny bald head I have. If you haven't heard, I am the "baldest guy in Houston". That's not somethign I'm necessarily proud of but don't you think bald guys look smarter? Okay, not the comb over bald guys, but the shaved bald guys.

Back to short sales... they looks like the first government program in a long time that is designed to actually work and not just pretend to be a solution to a huge problem.

Until next time!

Steven Kaufman
Zeus Mortgage
AskZeus.com

"The Baldest Guy in Houston"

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1 comment:

Sara said...

It's indeed a great initiative by the government to come up with the Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA) program. This program will help a large number of homeowners to short sell their properties and avoid foreclosures. In order to qualify for a HAFA short sale, the property should be the principal residence of the borrower, the loan should be guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the mortgage should be originated before January 1, 2009.

The government has made it mandatory for all participatory lenders to consider eligible homeowners for a HAFA short sale before they start off with the foreclosure process. The best part of the HAFA short sale is that the lender will not be able to pursue the borrowers for the deficient balance. It will be forgiven by the lender.

June 8, 2010 at 6:08 AM

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