Before a
homeowner sits down to write the hardship letter for their short sale
application, they often ask me how long the letter should be. There are two schools of thought on how long
a hardship letter should be. One school
contends that a hardship letter should be as short as possible. The other school of thought is that a
hardship letter should be lengthy, comprehensive and very detailed. The second school encourages property owners to
go into great detail about their personal history with their property, the
circumstances that contributed to their financial problems as well as the steps
that they have taken to deal with those problems.
I have
read hundreds of short sales over the many years I have been negotiating short
sales and I can say from experience that both arguments have some
validity. On one hand, the first
argument for the hardship letter being brief is correct in that most short sale
departments at banks are overwhelmed with hundreds of files and the loss
mitigators working on those files don’t have the time to read someone’s
personal novel about their property. On
the other hand, every property owner has a different situation and some personal
stories may be more complicated and require a longer explanation.
The truth
is that you don’t need to worry about how long your hardship letter is. The length of the letter is not nearly as
important as making certain that your hardship letter is effective. An effective
hardship letter must be complete and
it always must be consistent with
all the other supporting documents that you send to your bank as part of your
short sale package. Complete means
writing enough to identify at least one legitimate financial hardship making it
difficult for you to meet your mortgage obligation. Consistency is important because your
hardship letter creates a permanent record that could make things difficult for
you later in the process or after the sale if you are seen to be contradictory
or misleading.
Gerald Lucas, 'The Short Sale Authority'
http://performanceshortsale.com/ has successfully negotiated hundreds of
short sales over the past decade he has spent in the real estate
business. He shares his extensive experience as a real estate investor,
coach, college professor and lecturer. Mr. Lucas is Managing Director
of Performance Property, LLC, a short sale negotiation company based in
Jersey City, NJ http://www.performancepropertyllc.com/ Mr. Lucas holds
an undergraduate business degree from Howard University as well as an
MBA from MIT's Sloan School of Management.
