Short Sale

Q. Is the short sale purchase price negotiable?

A. The short answer is yes.

The purpose of a short sale is to sell the property, often to prevent foreclosure which is something both the owner and his/her lender would like to prevent. In order to sell the property has to meet the demands of the market just as any other property be it a normal sale or bank owned property. It will be the market place that determines what price is right. 

That does not mean that the bank will not stick their hands and ideas into the process. It depends on what program is being used to sell the property short. There are a few predefined programs like HAFA in which a sales price is set by someone other than the seller and or the seller agent, but for the most part if…

You may not be ready to sell you home if the only way to see it is by making an appointment with you, the owner, and you don't call back. You don't call back even after 4 calls in 6 days.

You may not be ready to sell if the agent you hired to sell your home, after a week has not put up even one photo of your home on the MLS, even though it is required.

That means hundreds of places your homes is listed and advertised for sale, from Realtor dot com, Zillow dot com to Redfin dot com will not have a photo of your property and as stats have show time and time again, properties listed with no photos get skipped over.

You may not be motivated to sell if your home is facing foreclosure and is listed as a short sale and the above two are…

Despite the many improvements in how short sales are handled there are people who still won't touch them with a ten foot stick and the reasons for this are understandable, but sometimes unreasonable.

Yes, short sales are precarious beasts, but there are plenty of them closing each month. In the last 30 days of this report 2,113 short sales closed. That is higher then last month, last quarter and last year. 

About 21.5% of all sales are short sales: one in five homes.

More importantly there is a 56.9% success rate. That means that of all short sale properties that go off the market for some reason within a given period 57% sold.  Compare this to 72.4% for the market as a whole and the chances of an actual closing are pretty high.

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This is a list in part taken from recommendations made by a major mortgagor and servicing company which is currently dealing with a good number of short sales. Overall these tips are geared toward agents processing the short sale, but you as a seller and/or buyer will benefit by knowing these. Even if you hire an agent you need to know how the process works.

1. Educate yourself about the short sale process.

Increase your knowledge of short sales and become an expert on banks process. Each lender has their own process and a key to more efficiency, less stress and success is knowing how a particular lender process the short sale and holding your self and the bank to it. The more you understand about short sales, the better you’ll be able to…

You may just want to avoid short sale or bank owned foreclosed properties in your Phoenix homes search. I can understand that. Many people make that choice for different reasons.  

You can easily exclude either or both short sale or bank owned homes with our advanced search. 

I did a quick search and saw 31,771 active residential properties on the market: that's a low number. I then selected the options to include no bank owned home and no short sale properties in my results.  

The number was no 15,703.  That shows that there are still many options for those who don't want to deal with short sale no foreclosures: about half the active properties in the Phoenix market place are traditional sales.

Bank approved short sales make the 'short' of short sale a reality, at least for the party who takes on the listing at this stage.

Phoenix short sales a notorious for being precarious unpredictable creatures - at least time wise, making them difficult to pursue for those who have strict guidelines on when to close and move into a home.

That's where 'bank approved short sales' become attractive. These are simply properties that were under contract and have gone through the time line and process of approval - which could be a month or six months and the buyer for some reason pulled out and there was no back up offer.  Some of these could also be part of the nearly failed HAFA program.

At the time of writing there were some 300 such homes in all…

1. Has your agent actually successfully closed Short Sales as a listing agent?

2. Is your agent trained in Short Sale Transactions?

3. Can your agent provide proof of experience in short sales?

These are some of the questions you should ask the short sale listing agent you'll hire to sell your home and help you through the short sale process.

The implications of choosing the wrong people for a team can leave your credit in ruin and/or much worse. 

There are lots of designations out there purporting to promote agents as experts in short sales, but most of them don't even require an agent to have any sort of actual experiences with closing short sales to obtain the designations?  What type of service will you get from someone who…

Another home sold, by inPhoenix Realty Partners in the Windsor Square Neighborhood.  

This time we brought the buyers to this wonderful remodeled ranch home which was being sold as a short sale. The transaction was with another agent from Premier Marketing Group in which we both belong.  

The short sale has some tense moments, but moved along at a normal short sale pace.  

We're  happy that our client was able to obtain a nice home for a great price in the venerable Windsor Square which, by the way, has amazing prospect for value appreciation in the coming years.  

It's really obvious: obvious to those who know the complex and area that this condo is worth $85,000 and not the $97,000 the agent doing the broker price opinion (BPO) came up with.

So we countered at $86,000.  A few weeks go by and the bank rejects the counter stating it will only accept $97,000, probably believing, based on the wrong BPO that they will either find someone stupid enough to pay $97,000 or that should it go into foreclosure that they will get closer to that then short selling it for the current offer price.

How the BPO agent arrived at $97,000 is a mystery.  In fact, the BPO agent did not even go to the property as required.  The lender did not even hear care to understand that the BPO is wrong and that the BPO agent did not…

There is still a lot of misunderstanding about short sales out there.  Homeowners should be very careful about where information comes from, who they hire, listen to and what they do next as I see lots of people believing in myths and these beliefs, in most cases false, are putting people into foreclosure.  

Let’s take a look at a few of the short sale myths out there.

Myth One: You Need To Have Unpaid Mortgage Payments To Do A Short Sale.

There are many situations where a seller is in imminent default, but can still hang on and they are cooperating with a bank to come up with a solution.  In most cases where default is impending the lender will work with the owner despite them being current on the mortgage.  We’ve had several such…