A hardship letter for short sale is required to be approved for a short sale on your home. If you aren’t facing a valid hardship, then you probably won’t be able to get a short sale approval.
A hardship letter is very simple to write and shouldn’t take you longer than 20 minutes, especially if you have had a valid hardship. Anyone can talk about how hard life is, we all have problems and it’s always nice to let it out.
What is a hardship? Hardships don’t have to be financial, they can be anything that will prevent you from making a mortgage payment on time. However, don’t think a bank will accept that you just want to walk away, that is not a valid hardship, and it’s important to understand that just because the economy tanked, it doesn’t give you the right to walk away from your home.
I don’t judge, but this is how the bank sees it. Personally, I could careless if you walked away from a home, as I have no idea what your motives are or what your financial situation is. Sometimes, it just makes sense to cut your losses and move on, and who am I to judge? Back to the hardship letter.
Short Sale Hardship Letter Sample
Date
(Company’s Name)
(Company’s Address)
RE: (home address)
Loan number: (#)
Dear Bank,
We bought a home back in (date) before the economy went into recession. We were very excited about our new home, but little did we know, the economy would crash and as you well know, many homes aren’t worth what they used to be. With this and the current inflation of food and gas prices we are no longer able to afford the home. It has come to either food for our family or pay the mortgage. We have decided that food for our family is more important than a mortgage payment.
We tried to rearrange our expenses and even refinanced, but we still are unable to make the numbers work. Our adjustable rate is about to go up, and when this happens, it will decimate our finances. We wanted to sell the home, but a local Realtor has shown that our home has lost over 20% of it’s value since we bought the home. The equity we once had is gone and we are now sitting underwater in our mortgage.
Over the last few months, our financial situation has gotten worse as my husband has been working part time do to his employment cutting back hours. (Explain anything that has caused your finances to decrease or why you aren’t making enough or as much as you used to.
As much as it pains us to sale our home, we fill the only way to save face is to ask for a short sale approval. We would prefer to avoid a foreclosure and I am sure you would also like the same. If it came to foreclosure, we would most likely have to take out bankruptcy and this would affect the amount of money you would get from our home. We feel it would be a win-win scenario to try a short sale and get as much money as possible out of the property to bring our mortgage as close to full payment as is viable in this economy.
I have included all supporting documents of our current financial expenses and total monthly income. (Your letter should have all of your financial documents included such as bank statements, w-2′s, and yearly/monthly expenses including all loans, groceries, gas, and utilities.
We are truly sorry for the current events, and it was never our intention to go this route, but we feel it is our last option. We would appreciate any help you can offer for our family at this time. Please contact our Realtor (give your Realtor name and contact details) for more information on our situation and the current market statistics.
I/we, (Home Owner Name/Co-signer Name), state that the information provided above is true and correct to the best of my/our knowledge.
Your Truly,
(Home Owner Name)
(Co-signer Name)
(Home Owner Address)
(Account #)
Short Sale Hardship Letter
This is a very basic outline of a hardship letter example. You need to put everything you have into this letter. Show emotion and explain in great detail your current financial circumstances if that is your hardship.
If your hardship is something like a job transfer or divorce, you will need legal documents to back up your claims. If you’ve had medical bills, include all your medical expenses with the hospital cover letter. Your hardship letter has to be real, so don’t think you can fake it.
Things you should watch out for when writing your hardship letter is whining. No one likes a whiner, so try to keep it about the facts and the facts only. Show your emotions, but don’t complain about how hard life is, it doesn’t work. Make sure the bank knows that you have no other choice.
If they see a small light in your tunnel, they will clamp down on that light and suck the life out of you. You have to make sure they know that you have no life left, and your only chance for salvation is a short sale.
I hope you find this article helpful on writing a hardship letter for a short sale. If you have any questions of need help putting your hardship letter for a short sale, please leave me a comment and I will try to help you the best I can.
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