I just spoke to a previous client of mine who closed on the Short Sale of their home about 3 months. I have read all over the Internet that Short Sales benefit no one other than the lisitng agents and that they are just as damaging to one’s credit as a foreclosure. I can now say concretely that this is incorrect and can prove it with data. Maybe not in every case but in what I just took part in, I am shocked at how well they came out.

Here are the details. Home was bought by prime borrowers with full doc loans at high 700/800+ Fico scores. Relocation forced borrowers to move cross country for family reasons. The short sale was completed with the sellers never missing a single payment. This dispells the myth that you always need to miss payments to get the bank to accept the short sale. The truth is you need to demostrate a hardship case. The bank wrote off about $100,000 of debt which the sellers will not be taxed on federally or statewise.

I asked them to monitor their FICO scores over the next 2 years for me so we could see what the damage was. It is now 3 months later and the short pay appears on all 3 credit bureaus.

Lets see who can guess the closest to what their FICO scores are now?