Husband won't respond & how does a foreclosure get reported?

Foreclosures, Short Sales, Tax Foreclosures
1

I’m working with the ex-wife about short-selling her house. The husband has moved clear out of state. Their divorce proceedings declared that the husband gets “50% interest in real-property”. The problem is, the husband won’t respond to the letters we’ve been sending (we don’t have his phone number). Now I started thinking about this: even if the husband gets 50% interest, in a short-sale, the sale of the house nets the prior owners $0, thus, he would get 50% interest of $0 = $0, right?
Another interesting tidbit, the lender offered to sell me the foreclosure. In essence, I could be the one to foreclosue, wipe out all junior mortgages and leins and go from there. However, part reason of doing these short-sales is to prevent foreclosures from messing up people’s credit, so, I’m not sure I want to take that route - I’d rather let the bank be the bad one that did the foreclosure.
Final thing, how does a foreclosure get reported? I’d go thru with the foreclosure, if I could complete it but not have it report on the owner’s credit report(s). How do credit reporting companies become aware of foreclosuers?

So, how to work this short-sale? Specifically, did I conclude right about the “50% interest in real property” equating to $0 on the bottom line in a short-sale? Has anybody here foreclosed on a property they owned? What’s involved in all that? Thanks.

Dean

2

You are correct that 50% of zero is still zero, however the ex husband has a 50% interest in the real property. Meaning you can’t do anything with that property unless he consents to the deal or gives up his interest prior to any deal. Credit report data typically comes directly from the creditors thus if you were the first mortgage holder and foreclosed but reported nothing to the credit bureaus then perhaps this would not show. Caveat, I am no expert in credit bureau data collection so they may pull info from public records etc.

3

71tr your right, if you don’t report it it won’t show, however the lates that were already on there would still be on the credit report (if any).

4

Also the junior liens (if any) would report the loss of their interest.

But from your standpoint, buying the note and foreclosing would be the easiest route, but you’d have to inform your ex-wife that you have no bearing on the outcome as concerns other creditors.

5

Public records information are included in credit reports - so I believe that the foreclosure will automatically show up, without you notifying the credit reporting agencies.