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Here are a few things you should not be surprised to see crop up during the short sale process.

Unscrupulous Debt Collection Tactics: If you are facing financial hardship, then paying credit cards and other unsecured debts is your lowest priority.

An unsecured debt is a debt where they can’t take away your car or house. A secured debt has something as collateral, such as your car, house, or anything else of value.

The most common unsecured debt is a credit card. When you stop paying them, they will call you non stop. The reason is because they don’t have any other way to collect from you. They can’t come get your car or take your house. So, they make up for that by blowing up your phone with harassing calls. In addition, they use deceptive tricks to get you to pay them.

For example, there are Federal Laws that regulate what they can do or say. They aren’t allowed to threaten to sue you, but then not follow through and actually file suit. To get around this rule, they will use language that sounds legal, but isn’t. In one situation, a debt collector in Buffalo, New York named their firm Hoffman, Weinberg & O’Brien to make it sound like they were a law firm.

They would then leave messages on people’s answering machines. They would say they were with the office of Hoffman, Weinberg & O’Brien and then say they may resort to future legal action. In addition, they would reference case number 8306042. If you didn’t know any better, you would think the case number was for an actual lawsuit against you. That is scary. Don’t you agree?

Most credit card accounts never sue (despite the constant threats.) Even when they do sue and get a judgment, they rarely ever attempt to garnish wages. A lot of judgments expire without getting paid. But, a lot of them get paid off when a person’s income increases, or that person sells a valuable asset such as a house.

It might seem like the process takes a long time. Some short sales only take a few months. Before you know it you are moving out of your house and onto the next place. However, some short sales will take a lot longer. We have some files that we have been working on for a year or even longer. It’s not the end of the world. Just stay put and keep on saving the money you would be using for rent. In most cases the short sale will eventually be approved and you can move on with your life.

Your lender may attempt to collect money from you when they aren’t legally entitled to do so. We have heard several stories of some lenders asking for a promissory note when the state the property was in did not allow the lender to pursue the homeowner after a short sale. The stories in question were for short sales of properties in California and Washington. Don’t sign a promissory note a lender sends you after a short sale when you are in a non-recourse state. Talk to a lawyer to see if you are obligated to repay the debt. You could probably get out of repaying it if you tried. 




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