My husband and I want to do a short sale for a number of reasons:

1. I received a job offer in Miami and need to start in 30 days and we want to get out of the NY area
2. Our home has depreciated in value close to $30K in a year
3. If we rent it out, our mortgage is so high that we would still have to add an additional $700-$1000 a month ourselves
4. We can't afford to make the payments
5. There are no refinance options available to us (we've tried three different banks/companies

We were advised by our realtor (and a few things we've read) to go ahead and stop paying the mortgage since we are not currently behind, but are behind on ALL of our other bills. She's done a number of short sales and says the bank is more accepting of a short sale if the owner is late on payments. Is this true? We would like to stop paying since we will need the money to start elsewhere and we want to rent a place before our credit gets hit by the short sale.

Also, is it okay to move out of our place in 30 days if we decide to go the short sale route?