HAFA Guidelines

HAFA, which stands for Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives, offers homeowners alternatives to foreclosure. For instance, when a homeowner can not qualify for a loan modification, another alternative offered by the bank will be allowing the homeowner to sell their property at a discount as I have been posting in my recent blogging. One of the most important highlights of the HAFA program for short sales is the relocation assistance of $3,000 that a homeowner can qualify for at the time of closing. Under normal circumstances, a homeowner is not allowed to profit from a short sale, obviously because the bank is allowing the homeowner to sell at a loss to the bank. There is a lot of paperwork involved for homeowners to qualify for HAFA, because whenever government is involved, well.....you know the story.

Recently, I processed a HAFA short sale with Select Portfolio Servicing (SPS). They were requesting too much lengthy information from my client. So the short sale rep converted the HAFA short sale to a regular short sale. This omitted the request for additional documents from the homeowner. Now the wonderful thing on this deal, SPS still offered to give my client the $3,000 relocation assistance.

Catch this video from CDPE about the HAFA initiative, although it's old, you can get a better understanding & log-on to their website for updates on future webinars. CDPE stands for Certified Distressed Property Expert. They offer a professional certfication program for Realtors for mastering the ins & outs of short sales.