(630) 673-6233
I am at Century 21 Hometown in Plainfield and Naperville IL. I specialize in helping first time home buyers and sellers, and have experience with foreclosures, short sales, and working with investors. I work all over the Chicagoland area, but I focus on Plainfield, Naperville, Romeoville and Joliet.
Honestly shouldn't we blame Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the lax loan requirements for the high rate of foreclosures everywhere? Unfortunately they made home buying a "right" and turned a blind eye to the homeowners ability to pay back these loans, but they were forced to do so by the likes of Barney Frank and Ben Bernacki. The inequality doesn't come from the steering homeowners to specific neighborhoods, it comes from the inequality of income among minorities when compared to whites, and a reduction in opportunities for those same individuals. Banks were forced to write these loans by Barney Frank, and charged the borrowers higher interest based on the risk involved due to credit and income issues... many of which are due to the result of the discrepancy in socioeconomic factors. The root of this problem isn't that they were discriminated against in the housing market... they were discriminated against in earning a fair wage. This problem is much deeper than housing discrimination...
While I don't agree with all of your points, I do agree that there are WAY too many uneducated and unprofessional agents out there that will no longer be in business 6 months from now, who yes, unfortunately do give those of us who do an excellent job of servicing our customers a very bad name. Where I do disagree: As far as offering our service to help keep people in their homes... that is not my job. If they contact me about avoiding a foreclosure, I get paid to sell houses, not counsel homeowners who borrowed more money they could afford with terms that were not sustainable. I'm not a psychologist or a social worker.
There certainly is a benefit to working with a short sale negotiator. If they are able to start the short sale early in the process with an offer to purchase, by the time a buyer comes into the picture half of the wait time is reduced. The hardest part of doing a short sale is keeping the buyer on the hook while the sale is being negotiated. We shouldn't fear short sales, but rather fine tune our skills to expedite them. Many lenders simply won't look at offers with incomplete files... and believe me, they won't call you looking for the paperwork, they are much too busy.
