The biggest reason anyone short sells their house is to avoid foreclosure. They cannot afford the house anymore and the bank has is threatening to foreclose. If the short sale is not successful, then their lender will foreclose on the house. We at the Stop Foreclosure Institute have successfully closed short sales for several years.
We’ve made it our business to know what we are doing. But, we see many agents trying to help people that have no clue about short sales, or the short sale process. This gives short sales a bad name. Many agents have been involved in short sales where the listing agent didn’t know what they were doing.
Because of that the short sale wasn’t successful and that agent and their customer wasted time. In the future they are going to think twice before showing a short sale. This hurts other short sale sellers. It really gets on my nerves that people who don’t know what they are doing can ruin it for everyone else. If you are thinking about short selling your home, make sure you hire a competent, experienced short sale agent. (A competent, experienced agent will be successful at 80-90% of all the short sales they take on.)
Here are a few of the things that agent should avoid.
We’ve made it our business to know what we are doing. But, we see many agents trying to help people that have no clue about short sales, or the short sale process. This gives short sales a bad name. Many agents have been involved in short sales where the listing agent didn’t know what they were doing.
Because of that the short sale wasn’t successful and that agent and their customer wasted time. In the future they are going to think twice before showing a short sale. This hurts other short sale sellers. It really gets on my nerves that people who don’t know what they are doing can ruin it for everyone else. If you are thinking about short selling your home, make sure you hire a competent, experienced short sale agent. (A competent, experienced agent will be successful at 80-90% of all the short sales they take on.)
Here are a few of the things that agent should avoid.
- Submitting multiple offers to the short sale lender. Only the best offer should be submitted. A confused mind says no. Most short sale negotiators have between 50 and 200 short sale files on their desk. To ask them to weigh the benefits of 3 short sale offers on just one of those 50 files is probably more than their brain can handle. No, I’m not saying their brain is stupid. It’s just that a human brain can only handle so much information before it stops working. You must remember that most short sale negotiators are handling 50-100 different files at one time. They can't possibly remember all the details in 50 different files!
- Realtors submitting incomplete paperwork to the short sale lender. There is a method to follow. Every good short sale realtor understands stacking order, and the importance of easy to read paperwork.
- Submitting low offers to the lender. All this does is waste time. If a lender is not likely to accept the offer, then don’t waste 45-60 days negotiating it with them. Get an offer at (or near) fair market value and submit that to the short sale lender. That helps avoid wasting everyone’s time.