Until recently real estate agents have expressed their concerns to buyers to try and avoid short sales if at all possible because they can take months upon months for the transaction to be processed and ultimately the deal could still fall through. However, that's really not the case these days.
Today, short sales are ever increasing and becoming more mainstream because of better guidelines, cash incentives and banks being able to better streamline the short sale process.
This is great news for both people trying to get into the housing market, either for the first time or once again, as well as helping to shrink the available inventory of homes that are on the market.
Currently there are nearly 1.5 million foreclosed homes about to flood the market and with the process being streamlined improving the ability of selling short sales this will truly help the situation.
The lenders are getting better at handling short sales as well as the entire real estate industry. Today, on average short sales are taking approximately 184 days from default to sale compared to last year when it took 227 days. That's a vast improvement.
As the market is being flooded with more distressed properties short sales are becoming more difficult to avoid since they account for nearly one-third of all home sales.
On a positive note, troubled homeowners are finding out that short sales do less damage to their credit rating than a foreclosure which will allow them the opportunity to rapidly repair their credit giving them the chance to buy a new home in as little as two years compared to the seven years it takes after going through a foreclosure.
With more and more banks devoting more staff and resources to short sales soon short sales could outpace even standard sales. Only time will tell.