Damage to credit after a short sale if no missed payments?

But hold on. Won't underwater homeowners who qualify for the upcoming short-sale program be fundamentally different? Won't they have solid mortgage payment histories despite being underwater? Why should they have to take the same heavy hits to their scores earned by people who didn't pay their mortgage for months on end?

Good questions, but it appears that these sellers won't get the break they deserve. The scoring system, credit experts say, isn't set up to recognize — or properly report — short sales by on-time mortgage customers to the national credit bureaus. And the credit score companies aren't planning to make any changes to the penalties their models assign to people who participate in short sales.

Anthony Sprauve, a spokesman for Fair Isaac Corp., developer of the FICO score, says that in general, when a loan is paid off for less than the full balance, it is "classified as a severe negative item" by the FICO scoring model. And "there are currently no plans to change," he added.

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/09/business/la-fi-harney-20120909

Replies

Kevin - Greenville, SC November 1, 2012 at 6:31pm

But hold on. Won't underwater homeowners who qualify for the upcoming short-sale program be fundamentally different? Won't they have solid mortgage payment histories despite being underwater? Why should they have to take the same heavy hits to their scores earned by people who didn't pay their mortgage for months on end?

Good questions, but it appears that these sellers won't get the break they deserve. The scoring system, credit experts say, isn't set up to recognize — or properly report — short sales by on-time mortgage customers to the national credit bureaus. And the credit score companies aren't planning to make any changes to the penalties their models assign to people who participate in short sales.

Anthony Sprauve, a spokesman for Fair Isaac Corp., developer of the FICO score, says that in general, when a loan is paid off for less than the full balance, it is "classified as a severe negative item" by the FICO scoring model. And "there are currently no plans to change," he added.

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/09/business/la-fi-harney-20120909
- Wendy Rulnick > Kevin - Greenville, SC November 2, 2012 at 2:14am
  
  Kevin - That is a VERY interesting article.
Wendy Rulnick October 31, 2012 at 6:07am

He could get a 50-200 point score drop on just the short sale - "settled". If he is not motivated to do the short sale, I would drop him. I think sellers need to REALLY want to do a short sale.

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