HUD Relaxes FHA Guidelines

If you are interested in rehabbing and selling homes then you know one of the biggest issues is getting the darn things financed.  Over the last couple of years FHA has tightened their guidelines so that you must hold a home for at least 90 days in title before you can sell it to someone else.  Because of this it made it darn tough to find a lender that would finance your buyer.

Well the HUD commissioner has finally realized that the road to recovery is going to go through the investor community.  As a part of the Obama administrations efforts to get the housing market back on track HUD has been given $2 Billion to try and stabilize working class communities that have been pummeled by foreclosures and vacant properties.

HUD decided to waive FHA guidelines for the next year starting February 1^st and make it easier for investors to buy foreclosed homes, fix them up for retail sale and then sell them to retail buyers.  Hallelujah!!!

So for now you can fix up those homes and have them on the market and ready to sell right away.  On top of it this sounds like a shift in thinking.  IMHO HUD is saying, “We need to get these vacant, damaged homes fixed and back on the market and the way we want to do that is through legitimate real estate investors who can rebuild our communities.”

Before you get any ideas about flipping homes using this, think again.  They are making sure in this waiver notice that homes need to have value added to them, not just resold at a higher price.  Seems to me I remember someone harping about how you should make money by adding value to properties, thanks for agreeing with me Mr. Commissioner J

Leave me a comment and let me know what you think about this new FHA guideline waiver and the state of rehabbing for retail.