photo credit: eric731

Senior vice president of loss mitigation at CitiMortgage, Justin Rand, says that loan providers are streamlining short sale process in hopes of avoiding foreclosure for many homeowners who are sinking in mortgage debt. Since 2009, agents and owners have worked together to shorten the short sale process from 120 days down to only 83 days.

At the beginning of last week, a panel for the REO Expo Conference held in Fort Worth, Texas, reported that for CitiMortgage borrowers, over 16% of currently delinquent loans are now involved in the short sale process, a figure that has increased over 12% in the last two years. CitiMortgage is now offering incentives to their borrowers suffering from financial difficulties and who need funding to finish the short sale process.

The incentive provides an agreed-upon amount that would be disbursed to the seller once the short sale is achieved. Acquiring all of the needed documents is key to accomplishing a successful short sale. The Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives program was responsible for helping to decrease the number of documents required, and thanks to them, it now only takes around ten days to compile all the needed documentation to proceed with a short sale.

Once just around 150 empolyees, Bank of America's short sale department has grown to over 3,000 people. Each Bank of America employee handles 75 cases. David Sunlin, Bank of America operations executive, bragged, "Were past the point where were bumbling around losing files."

Rand also added that they started working a more proactive route in 2009 -- including searching through several local MLS services and contacting both owners and agents, looking for people who needed help escaping mortgage debt. Hopefully the market can benefit from more and more successful short sales, effectively halting the outrageous number of foreclosures we've been seeing in our country.

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