When Are Short Sales Deleted from Credit Report

By Experian Team

2 min readFeb 5, 2014

Dear Experian,

How long is a short sale on your credit report? We did a short sale in December 2010, and it is still on our credit report.

- SPG

Dear SPG,

The term "short sale" does not appear in a credit report. When you negotiate a short sale, the lender is agreeing to accept less than the full amount owed on the mortgage, and will likely report the account as settled for less than the full balance.

If you were delinquent on payments leading up to the short sale, the account will remain on your report for seven years from the original delinquency date of the mortgage.

If your payments were never late, the mortgage will remain on your credit report seven years from the date it was reported settled or paid.

Failing to pay your mortgage debt in full will always have a very negative affect on your credit scores. With time, the negative impact on your credit scores will decrease. However, it will likely have at least some negative impact on your credit scores as long as it remains on your credit report.

Thanks for asking.
The "Ask Experian" team