Sometimes changes in life could force you to sell your home.  The loss of a job, illness, disability, divorce, or other factors could make it impossible to keep your home.  The FHA has various suggestions for how to sell your home in the case that you need to sell quickly because you can no longer afford you monthly mortgage payment.

These suggestions include:

•    A normal sale.  You can list your home for sale by owner or have a real estate agent sell it for you.  There are fees involved with a real estate agent, but the home could see faster this way.

•    A short sale (also known as a pre-foreclosure sale) is when you sell your home for less than what you owe.  If the real estate market declined in your area or you borrowed so much in equity on your home and now it is worth less that what you owe on it, then your lender may be willing to take less than what you owe.  You must have been trying to sell your home with no offers, be behind on payments and unable to catch up or make current payments, and an appraisal shows that your home is worth less that the loan payoff.

•    You can give back the house to the lender.  The lender may allow you to be clear of your mortgage loan debt if you give up your rights to the home and turn over the deed in full to the lender.

•    Mortgage assumption. This is when a buyer takes over the mortgage and assumes payment.  This buyer will now own the home and you will no longer be responsible for mortgage payments.

All of these are the ways in which the FHA suggests that people who need to sell their home do so in order to avoid foreclosure.  It may be difficult to sell, but if there is no other choice it is better to make arrangements so that foreclosure can be avoided and your credit can be preserved for the future.