You Decide Realty · Short Sale & Foreclosure Help Center
If you are behind on a Las Vegas mortgage — or behind on HOA dues and just learned what that can cost you — you are probably reading a lot of pages written to scare you into a phone call. This is not one of them.
This is the resource center we built for our own clients: every Nevada deadline in order, the protections most homeowners never claim, the tax rule that changed on January 1, and an honest accounting of what a short sale really does and does not do. Nothing here costs you anything, and plenty of it points somewhere other than us.
Start with the honest version
We went and read the statutes, the IRS publications, the Fannie Mae Servicing Guide, and FICO’s own research. Here is what we found that nobody else is telling you.
“Forgiven mortgage debt is tax-free on your primary residence.”
The federal exclusion for qualified principal residence indebtedness expired for discharges after December 31, 2025. The IRS says so in plain language in Publication 4681, and the bill to renew it is still sitting in committee. If a lender forgives $80,000 in 2026, that is $80,000 of ordinary income unless a different exclusion applies — most commonly insolvency, which many genuinely underwater sellers qualify for. This one fact should change how and when you do the deal. Read the full breakdown →
“A short sale protects your credit score compared to a foreclosure.”
“There’s no significant difference in score impact between short sale/deed-in-lieu/settlement and foreclosure.” That is FICO, not us — from its own published research, and FICO has not revisited the comparison since. Full recovery can take seven to ten years either way. What genuinely is different is how soon you can buy again — four years versus seven on conventional financing, and potentially no waiting period at all on FHA and USDA if you had no late payments in the twelve months before the sale, with VA publishing no seasoning rule of its own. That is the real advantage, and it is a much better reason to act early. See the waiting periods →
“Once the bank approves the short sale, you’re off the hook for the rest.”
Not automatically. Under NRS 40.458, the statutory bar on a deficiency after a short sale only applies if the lender’s approval satisfies five conditions — and one of them is about what the approval letter says. It must contain a conspicuous waiver, signed by both the lender and you, stating the dollar amount being waived. Approval letters arrive every week without it. Sellers sign them and stay personally liable. The language to demand →
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Five questions. At the end you get a plain-language read on your position under Nevada law, which deadlines are running, and what is realistically still available to you. We do not ask who you are to show you the answer.
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If you would rather just jump in
Income change, payment shock, or costs outrunning the budget.
Every option, ranked →Nothing is recorded yet. This is the widest window you will have.
What happens next →Nevada’s mediation election expires 30 days after service. Most people miss it.
The deadline explained →You can still reinstate until five days before — and sales get postponed.
What still works →Nevada is a super-priority state. This is the Las Vegas story nobody covers.
HOA foreclosure guide →In Nevada that is illegal before your lender has signed an offer.
Know your rights →The Las Vegas picture, honestly
We are not going to inflate the numbers to make you panic, and we are not going to pretend nothing is happening. Here is the actual data, with the reporting period on every figure, because most sites are still quoting a 2025 headline as if it were current.
U.S. foreclosure filings, first half of 2026 vs. first half of 2025
ATTOM, Mid-Year 2026 Foreclosure Market Report
Nevada’s national rank for foreclosure rate, H1 2026 — 1 in every 452 housing units
ATTOM, Mid-Year 2026
Share of Las Vegas home sales that were short sales or foreclosures in July 2026 — down from 0.9% a year earlier
Las Vegas REALTORS, July 2026
Nevada mortgaged homes seriously underwater, Q1 2026 — better than 39 other states
ATTOM, Q1 2026 Home Equity & Underwater Report
Increase in HOA foreclosure filings nationally, 2022 to 2025. Nevada is one of five states accounting for 85% of them.
Cotality, August 2026
Average days to complete a Nevada foreclosure, Q2 2026 — fifth longest in the country
ATTOM, Q2 2026
One: you will still see “Nevada leads the nation in foreclosures” on local real estate sites. That was July 2025 data. Through 2026 Nevada has ranked between second and sixth, and Las Vegas–Henderson has not appeared in any of ATTOM’s published 2026 top-metro foreclosure-rate lists. Anyone quoting the 2025 headline without a date is not reading the source.
Two: Nevada’s foreclosure pipeline runs roughly four years. The completions being reported in 2026 largely reflect defaults that began in 2022 and 2023. That cuts both ways — it means today’s numbers understate today’s stress, and it means you personally have more time than the headlines suggest. Use it.
The whole library
The 30-day mediation window. The three-month wait. The 60-day danger notice. Why the “35 days to cure” everyone quotes is wrong for owner-occupants.
Read →Who approves what, why the lender pays the commission, the $6,000 second-lien ceiling, and the eight reasons these deals die.
Read →Credit, deficiency exposure, timeline, cost, relocation money, and how long until you can buy again. The comparison table we wish existed.
Read →Reinstatement, forbearance, modification, payment deferral, partial claims, mediation, selling outright, short sale, deed-in-lieu, bankruptcy.
Read →Who can come after you for the shortfall, the four conditions that protect you, the refinance trap, and the exact waiver language to demand.
Read →How an association can sell your home over a few thousand dollars, the hearing right that stops it, and the 60-day redemption almost nobody uses.
Read →The exclusion that ended January 1, the insolvency worksheet that may save you, Form 982, and why nonrecourse status matters enormously in Nevada.
Read →What FICO actually found, how long it reports, and the Fannie, Freddie, FHA, VA and USDA waiting periods — including the one that can be zero.
Read →Advance fees are illegal in Nevada. Here are the red flags, the statutes behind them, and where to report someone.
Read →Incomplete packages are the number one reason short sales stall. This is everything to gather, with progress that saves as you check it off.
Read →Why us
A distressed homeowner is the easiest person in real estate to take advantage of. You are scared, you are embarrassed, you are on a deadline, and there is a whole industry built around that combination. So here is exactly how we work, in writing.
If you do list with us, the commission structure is yours to pick — flat fee, traditional, or hybrid — the same as every other seller we work with. In a short sale that number is subject to lender approval on the settlement statement, and we will walk you through what that means before you commit to anything.
Questions we get every week
Not always. Fannie Mae allows a servicer to approve a short sale for a borrower who is current or fewer than 60 days delinquent if the servicer confirms 'imminent default' — a documented hardship that makes default foreseeable. Acting before you are late is often the single most valuable thing you can do, because FHA and USDA can waive the waiting period to buy again entirely when there were no late payments in the 12 months before the sale, and VA publishes no seasoning rule for a compromise sale at all.
For the real estate commission and standard settlement costs, generally nothing — the lender approves those as deductions from the sale proceeds. There are two exceptions worth knowing about up front. Some lenders evaluate a borrower cash contribution when you have significant non-retirement reserves or a low housing-expense-to-income ratio, and a mortgage insurance company may ask for a contribution or a promissory note as its price for approving. Both are negotiable and both should be identified early, not at closing.
It depends entirely on your loan and on what the approval letter says. Nevada bars a bank or credit union from pursuing a deficiency after a short sale under NRS 40.458 — but only if the property is a single-family dwelling you owned, the loan was used to purchase it, you lived in it continuously as your principal residence, and the approval agreement contains a conspicuous, mutually signed waiver stating the dollar amount waived. Refinanced loans, HELOCs used for anything other than purchase, investment properties, and private lenders fall outside the statute. For those, the negotiated waiver is your only protection.
Yes. Older articles saying it was ending are describing a 2017 sunset date that Senate Bill 490 repealed — the program was made permanent and moved to Home Means Nevada, Inc. A 2023 bill to eliminate it died in the Assembly, and the Supreme Court's Administrative Office of the Courts was still recruiting mediators for the 2026 cycle. The critical detail: an owner-occupant must elect mediation within 30 days after service of the Notice of Default.
No. The Nevada Affordable Housing Assistance Corporation, which administered the state's Homeowner Assistance Fund, states the fund is closed and no additional applications can be taken; federal HAF money had to be expended by September 30, 2025. Anyone telling you they can get you HAF money in 2026 — particularly for a fee — should be reported. Free HUD-approved housing counseling is still available at 800-569-4287.
Often, yes. A trustee's sale date is not automatically the end. Lenders routinely postpone a scheduled sale when there is a credible offer in front of them, and for an owner-occupied Nevada home the right to reinstate by curing the arrears generally runs until five days before the sale under NRS 107.0805. What you cannot do is wait — postponements are requested and granted, not automatic, and once the sale is held title vests without any right of redemption.
Once a Nevada trustee’s sale is held, title vests in the purchaser with no right of redemption — there is no undo. But until then, an owner-occupant’s right to reinstate generally runs to five days before the sale, and a pending offer is a reason to ask for a postponement.
702-843-0044Ken Calder · Nevada Broker B.1001776 · Speak to a licensed broker, not a call center.
Free · Confidential · No obligation
No judgment, no sales pitch, and no pressure to list anything. If the right answer is a loan modification, a bankruptcy attorney, or a HUD counselor instead of us, that is what we will say. We are a licensed Nevada brokerage, not a foreclosure rescue company — and we never charge a homeowner a fee to look at their situation.
We do not publish a figure, a deadline, or a statute we have not read. Every claim above traces to one of these. If you find something here that is out of date, tell us and we will fix it and re-stamp the page.