Under new rules that took effect June 15, underwater borrowers with Freddie Mac- or Fannie Mae-backed loans who sell their homes in a short sale now will receive decisions on whether their short sale is approved from lenders within 60 business days. 

The new guidelines are viewed as a way to speed the short sale process, which once averaged eight months, according to RealtyTrac. The long wait often had buyers walking away from the deals. 

But despite the faster deadlines now in place, the process can still be prolonged if all the necessary paperwork isn’t submitted to the lender, even if just a photocopy of a borrower’s driver’s license is missing. One missing piece of paperwork could cause borrowers to have to start the submission process all over again and prolong the wait, banks say.

“The way short sales are packaged and presented by real estate agents is more than half the battle,” Ed Delgado, who trains agents how to package short sales, told the Chicago Tribune. “The more agents understand about how the process works, the fewer the delays and the faster the closings.”

One critical document in the short sale package: The hardship letter. In this letter, home owners explain why they need to short sell the property. 

“You don’t need a novel … Be precise; be clear,” says Karen Mayfield, national sales manager at Bank of the West in San Francisco. “Offer a bullet-point list in your own hand of the events that led to your hardship. If the lender can’t understand how you got into trouble, he may close your file and move on to the next one. Or he may suspect you are trying to pull a fast one.”

Lenders also likely require tax returns for the last two years, bank statements for two to six months, pay stubs for the last 60 days, proof of residency (such as a paid utility bill), a listing agreement, and a third-party authorization allowing the bank to work with the real estate agent. 

Sales trainer Gee Dunsten says he advises agents to bind all of these required documents together with a cover letter and table of contents that clearly lists everything included to let lenders know right away everything is there. Dunsten also says he writes a personal letter to the lender that explains the details of the transaction. 

“When it comes to short sales, the devil truly is in the details,” Dunsten says.

Twenty-five states have bills in front of lawmakers that seek to make it more challenging for banks to foreclose on home owners, The Wall Street Journal reports. But lenders argue that the bills are roadblocks that are hindering a housing recovery. 

For example, on Monday, California state lawmakers approved a bill that would apply a set of stricter rules on mortgage servicers who foreclose on home owners and open servicers up to new legal liabilities. While some say it will help ensure the foreclosure process is more fair and transparent, others have argued that it will lengthen the process of foreclosures in the state. The bill still must be approved by the state’s governor to go into effect. 

Other states have adopted, or are considering, similar guidelines on foreclosures. Nevada lawmakers last fall approved a bill that made it a felony for lenders to make any false representations when signing off on foreclosures. The bill caused foreclosures to plunge in the state, but housing analysts say it created a backlog of severely delinquent mortgages. 

Bank officials are concerned that states’ new rules will slow the foreclosure process and prolong the foreclosure crisis. 

“Should all 50 states decide to go down their own path, lenders are going to have multiple processes, each with their own little nuances, and every single penny of that cost will be borne by tomorrow’s borrowers,” David Stevens, chief executive of the Mortgage Bankers Association, told The Wall Street Journal.

What’s more, the mortgage industry says the bills do little to truly help borrowers avoid foreclosure altogether but rather just drag out the process. 

“It would allow consumers to extend, in theory payment-free, the entire proceeding for months while waiting for the deliberation of the modification effort,” Stevens says.

The state of Texas is growing fast. The state has eight of the nation’s 15 fastest-growing cities and six of the top seven, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, which evaluated population increases in 2011 for cities with more than 100,000 residents. 

However, beating out Texas cities for the top spot, New Orleans came in at No. 1 on the list of fastest-growing cities. New Orleans has seen its population grow by nearly 5 percent from April 1, 2010, to July 1, 2011. 

The following are the 15 fastest-growing cities in that time period and the percentage population growth, according to the U.S. Census Bureau analysis:

1. New Orleans
2. Round Rock, Texas: 4.8% growth
3. Austin: 3.8%
4. Plano: 3.8%
5. McKinney: 3.8%
6. Frisco: 3.8%
7. Denton, Texas: 3.4%
8. Denver: 3.3%
9. Cary, N.C.: 3.2%
10. Raleigh, N.C.: 3.1%
11. Alexandria, Va.: 3.1%
12. Tampa, Fla.: 3.1%
13. McAllen, Texas: 3%
14. Carrollton, Texas: 3%
15. Atlanta: 3%

“These estimates provide our first look at how much the total population has changed in each of our nation’s cities since we conducted the 2010 Census,” says Robert Groves, Census Bureau director. “These numbers provide further evidence of a continuation of the trend of rapid population growth in Texas we observed between the 2000 and 2010 censuses.”

Meanwhile, the cities with the largest overall populations in the U.S.? New York continued to be the most populous with 8.2 million residents in 2011, followed by Los Angeles (3.8 million), Chicago (2.7 million), and Houston (2.1 million), the U.S. Census Bureau reports.