A little too late for me, Treasury to help streamline real estate short sales

This year it's with no small sense of embarrassment that I had to unload a commercial property as a "short sale." I hasten to underscore that I'm by no means a big-time real estate investor, despite how the first line reads.

To make a long story short, for 10 years, I had been renting studio space for my small production company, but was convinced to buy a place when my previous lease had expired. Instead of tossing away thousands of dollars a year on rent, the new place would be an investment. In theory.

Of course I had no idea the economy would collapse as severely as it did, so due to a wide variety of problems including an increasingly expensive renovation process, I had no choice but to unload the property during some of the worst economic conditions imaginable. In the end, I resorted to a short sale (selling the property for less than the mortgage balance due).