HAFA has been around for months now. However, its adoption by lenders seems to be moving at a glacial pace. The banks have done their best to put up any and every roadblock they can. One of their favorites has been, "This is a Fannie Mae (or Freddie Mac) loan, and as such, is not eligible for HAFA."
The good news is that recently, both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae announced that they will participate in the HAFA program. In essence, they copied and pasted the program guidelines into their own guidelines.
Why they did not participate from the beginning is a mystery to me. There must have been a guy somewhere over at Fannie Mae, twiddling his thumbs in a cubical, waiting for his retirement date to roll around, and in order to satisfy the board of directors that he was, indeed, doing something useful with his remaining time, accepted the job of copying and pasting from the Treasury Department's HAFA guidelines.
My guess is that in order to distance themselves from the recent scrutiny concerning the plagiarism that seems to be an issue with the Colorado gubernatorial race, the guy's boss told the short timer to make up something new, to change a few words here and there just to be on the safe side, and to please burn up as much time doing the job as was humanly possible. (Freddie Mac did pretty much the same thing but with a female writer. There's certainly no need to bore you with those details.)
To give credit where credit is due, the short timer at Fannie Mae actually did come up with at least one new idea. If a homeowner has to move over 100 miles away for a job, the "owner-occupied" stipulation can be waived. Great idea. Original too.
So there you have it. Beginning August 1, 2010, the banks now have fewer roadblocks to detour real estate professionals when we try to participate in HAFA-at least for the time being. I'm sure they will think of others soon, but for now, some progress is better than no progress.
Oh, and if you think I am giddy with anticipation about how great Fannie and Freddie's participation will actually be, think again. I have about as much faith in them as I do in the HAFA program, itself.
If you would like a bit more insight into HAFA's biggest problems, take a look at a few of my videos on the subject.
http://www.youtube.com/user/AllianceShortSales#p/u/33/axFOBBuB8ck
http://www.youtube.com/user/AllianceShortSales#p/u/32/d5wAwc3uXTY
http://www.youtube.com/user/AllianceShortSales#p/u/22/_VdIe9dpOZU
This last one is my favorite. :)
Much success in your short sale processing.
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