HI Charles - It's about time!  When they first announced this months ago, we had a market flooded with short sales and foreclosures.  With the loan modification programs coming on line, many homeowners stopped paying their mortgages and applied for loan mods - which were mostly denied.  But the banks didn't start foreclosure proceedings because their REO inventory was so high and they were having trouble selling some of them. 

These folks continued to not pay their house payments, and have made no effort to start short sales in many cases because they figured it would be denied too and would only trigger a foreclosure.  We've been in limbo and our market is just beginning to turn around.  It would be great to see a uniform process for short sales and some incentive to encourage the banks and borrowers to go forward with them and work toward getting the housing market back to "normal."