I Just Completed a Short Sale. How Long Before I Can Get a New Mortgage?

As I tell my clients, I am a real estate professional. That means I am an expert in buying, selling, marketing and valuations of residential real estate. I am going to defer to a mortgage expert for this answer.

This answer is by Matt Bukovy, Sr. Mortgage Consultant at Wintrust Mortgage

To qualify for an FHA LOAN after a Short Sale: You must either wait 3 YEARS from the date sale closed and transferred to new owner. There is (theoretically) no waiting period if the borrower had no late payments on ANY mortgage or consumer debt within the 12 month period preceding the short sale AND they are not taking advantage of declining market conditions, but … seriously … that’s exceedingly unlikely.

For CONVENTIONAL LOANS, it’s more complicated:
7 years from date sale closed and transferred to new owner or transferred back to bank for new loans with less than 10% down payment.
4 years from date sale closed and transferred to new owner or transferred back to bank for new loans with 10% down payment.
2 years from date sale closed and transferred to new owner or transferred back to bank for new loans with 20% down payment.
2 years from date sale closed and transferred to new owner or transferred back to bank for new loans with 10% down payment and acceptable extenuating circumstances.

As far as acceptable extenuating circumstances are concerned, they need to be documentable and verifiable nonrecurring events that are beyond the borrower’s control and cause a sudden, drastic and prolonged reduction in income. Death of a wage earner and catastrophic illnesses would count, divorce would not (since that is within the borrower’s control.)

So, as a rule of thumb, since it seems unlikely that someone with a 10 or 20% down payment would be ALLOWED to short-sell, most of the time, it’s going to be three years before you can get an FHA loan, and 7 years to get a conventional one.