The US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has announced that on October 1, 2013; their guidelines and rules will change for FHA short sales.

Here’s a list of the upcoming changes that could affect your short sale in Santa Clarita if you have an FHA loan…

• New or different documentation requirements for verifying assets, income, and expenses

• Deficit Income Test (DIT) will be used to determine a homeowner’s financial hardship

• Possible elimination of the financial hardship/deficit income preforeclosure sale requirement for:New validation requirements for appraisals

  • service members who have received Permanent Change of Station (PCS) Orders, or homeowners who are deemed eligible for a streamlined preforeclosure sale option

• Different dual agency/brokerage requirement: to meet the new short sale purchase contract addendum requirements, brokers and their agents may represent either the buyer or  the seller, but not both parties

9/26/13 UPDATE – It looks like HUD is backing down from the dual agency ban. Read some details on this over at Inman News.

The two most interesting developments here to me, are that larger brokerage such as Re/Max in Santa Clarita, Keller Williams, and Realty Executives in Santa Clarita won’t be able to have a dual agency in these FHA short sales. Meaning that, even though they have hundreds of different real estate agents, one agent in one company handling the seller, can not accept the offer being handled by another agent in the same company. HUD appears to think that there is too many liability in letting that continue to happen… perhaps sales are being made for less than market value intra-company. We all know that this does happen sometimes. I for one am happy to see short sale being sold for their full market value. When they’re sold for less than market value, it just hurts nearby homeowners who actually have an equity position in their Santa Clarita home.

I have no clue what the deficit means test is that they’ll be implementing to determine actual financial hardship when approving these FHA short sales, however, it sounds like they’ll be clamping down on people who aren’t in much of a hardship when electing to short sale their home.

New rules. New guidelines. Nothing new. The market will adapt.

Need short sale help in Santa Clarita? Looking for a short sale to buy? Ask Robert @ 661-373-2374 or just send your message here.

Check out this list of short sales in Santa Clarita that are currently listed for sale:

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