It starts at closing
Not when you fell behind, not when the lender approved it. The sooner the sale closes, the sooner you are eligible.
Colorado homeowners
Four years for a conventional loan, measured from the closing date. Two years if you can document that something outside your control caused it and you put at least 10 percent down. After a foreclosure it is seven.
A live person answers, not a robot and not a phone tree.
Not when you fell behind, not when the lender approved it. The sooner the sale closes, the sooner you are eligible.
A job loss, a medical event, a divorce. Documented, this can cut the conventional wait from four years to two with 10 percent down.
Three years of your life is the clearest practical argument for choosing a short sale while you still have the choice.
The waiting period passes on a date. Qualifying does not. The people who buy again at four years started rebuilding at year one.
Not when you fell behind.
Not when the lender approved it.
The day the short sale closes.
Which means the sooner it closes, the sooner you are eligible. People who delay a short sale hoping something changes are usually just moving the finish line further out.
Fit check
Four years conventional after a short sale. Seven after a foreclosure. Same house, same debt, very different re-entry.
A job loss, a medical event, a divorce. Documented, this can cut the conventional wait from four years to two with 10% down.
Conventional, FHA and VA each set their own waiting periods, and they are not the same. Some are meaningfully shorter.
The waiting period only makes you eligible. You still have to qualify, and that means credit rebuilt and income documented.
Two different gates.
The waiting period is the first. It passes on a date.
Qualifying is the second. It does not pass on its own.
A short sale reports for seven years even though you can borrow again after four. Lenders will see it. What they weigh is what you did after: on-time payments, low balances, steady income, and nothing new going late.
The people who buy again at four years are the ones who started rebuilding at year one.
Pull all three bureaus and confirm the short sale is reported accurately, including the date. Errors here cost real time and they do happen.
Termination letters, medical bills, the divorce decree. These are what shorten four years to two, and they are hard to reconstruct later.
One or two accounts, paid on time, balances low. Scores recover from a short sale faster than most people expect when nothing new goes wrong.
About a year out. They will tell you exactly what is missing while there is still time to fix it, rather than after an application is declined.
Four years from the closing date. Two years if documented extenuating circumstances caused the default and you put at least 10% down. Your lender makes that determination against your records.
Considerably. Four years versus seven on a conventional loan. Three years of your life is the clearest argument for choosing a short sale while you still have the choice.
Generally something outside your control that caused the default and is unlikely to recur: job loss, a serious medical event, a divorce. Documentation is what makes it count, not the story.
Roughly 85 to 160 points, and it reports for seven years. The drop is not permanent. Steady payments afterward recover much of it well before the seven years are up.
They will see it and they will ask. What they are looking for is what happened since. A clean four-year record after a documented hardship reads very differently than ongoing trouble.
Possibly. FHA and VA set their own waiting periods and they are not the same as conventional. Worth asking a lender about every program you might qualify for rather than assuming four years applies to all of them.
Tell us your closing date and we will tell you where you stand and what to line up first. A live person answers at 303-955-4220, not a robot and not a phone tree.