A foreclosure won’t damage your credit scores forever but will definitely have a serious impact on your ability to obtain another mortgage soon after it happens. Usually the foreclosure will remain on your credit report for seven years but you will have the possibility of obtaining other loans sooner than that depending on which lender you are dealing with. Moreover, if you stay current an all of your other debt payments after the foreclosure, your credit score can start to rebound after two years.
In any case, it is really difficult to predict precisely for how long the foreclosure process will affect your ability to obtain other forms of credit.
Concerning short sales and deeds in lieu of foreclosure there is a false belief that they will have a smaller impact on your credit scores, in comparison with the foreclosure process. In fact, your credit scores will also be affected for two to seven years because short sales and deeds in lieu of foreclosure also show that you defaulted on a mortgage loan and a future lender sees them as an evidence of your inability to pay your debts.
Even if your situation after a foreclosure will not be easy to overcome, we advise you to never trust any credit repair companies as the majority of them are scams. Indeed, credit reports can never be erased if there have been delinquencies on debts in within the past seven years.