Getting a home loan after Short Sale or Foreclosure

[Punisher]

If you had a short sale or foreclosure and were wondering when you could buy again, below you’ll find the waiting periods from the current lending guidelines for conventional loans, FHA, VA and USDA financing. This information is straight from the guidelines published by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA, VA and USDA. Some lenders make these guidelines more restrictive (that’s why we shop around for our clients), however no lender can make exceptions outside of these rules when offering these products. So, here you go:


If you had a Foreclosure:

7 years from completion date - Conventional financing, Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac
*3 years from completion date - Conventional financing, Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac - *with extenuating circumstances and limited to primary residence loans with minimum 10% down payment on purchase or minimum 10% equity on a non-cash out refinance.

3 years from completion date – FHA financing and USDA financing

2 years from completion date – VA financing
*1 year from completion date – VA financing *with extenuating circumstances


If you had a Short Sale:

7 years from completion date – Conventional financing Freddie Mac
4 years from completion date - Conventional financing Fannie Mae
4 years from completion date – Conventional Freddie Mac – okay with 10% down
*2 years from completion date – okay with Fannie Mae or 10% down with Freddie Mac *with extenuating circumstances

3 years from completion date – FHA and USDA

2 years from completion date – VA financing
*1 year from completion date – VA financing *with extenuating circumstances

*0 years from completion date – FHA financing – if borrower was current on all debts, including the mortgage, when short sale was completed.


Sources:

Fannie Mae – https://www.fanniemae.com/content/guide/sel072914.pdf https://www.fanniemae.com/content/guide/sel052714.pdf

Freddie Mac – http://www.freddiemac.com/learn/pdfs...ion_remind.pdf
FHA – http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/docu...5-1_4_secC.pdf
VA - http://benefits.va.gov/WARMS/docs/ad...m26_7/ch04.doc
USDA - http://www.rurdev.usda.gov/SupportDo...1chapter04.pdf

[Punisher]

Update - Fannie Mae changed their guidelines on 29 July 2014 regarding waiting periods to get a loan after foreclosures, short sales and bankruptcies. I'll edit the above post.

Or you can go to page 490 at the below pdf link.

https://www.fanniemae.com/content/guide/sel072914.pdf

[Punisher]

Update is mostly addressing if a Mortgage loan was included in a bankruptcy and then later the property foreclosed, instead of using the 7 year foreclosure timeframe, they would apply the 4 year timeframe for the BK.

Also, short sale time period was shortened from 7 years to 4 years.