Short Sale Process Could Get Jumpstart

PHOENIX -- One in four homeowners are under water in their mortgages, meaning they owe more on their loan than their home is worth.

In a short sale, you sell your home for less than you owe and the bank usually forgives the difference. But, the process can take a long time, which turns some sellers and buyers off.

Now there's a move to speed up short sales. Lawmakers are considering a bill that would send realtors back to school to learn all aspects of short sales.

Today, more than 13,000 homeowners are trying to short sale their single-family homes.

Realtor Brent Kastanowski says he knows one family that has been living in a home without paying for a full year while waiting for a short sale to go through.

State treasurer Dean Martin says we've never seen the volume of short sales like we're seeing today. Martin has created a Short Sale Task Force that is recommending realtors take 15 hours of short sale classes so they know the process.

"The financial institutions are so overwhelmed with short sale requests, that if you don't have every I dotted and every T crossed, it gets set aside until they can get back to it," says Martin.

Martin says our economy won't recover until the excess inventory of homes on the market goes down. Short sales are a way to avoid foreclosure, he says.

In April, the federal government plans to come out with guidelines on how to streamline the short sale process.