(239) 243-0630
Professional Debt Negotiator working with sellers and banks to liquidate problem properties. Over 30 years of construction and negotiating experience.
Good letter, Rachel. Brings up a lot of what's wrong with the way most short sales are mis-handled. And I agree with my friend, Rita, that short sales are a niche market, and agents need niche training. In my opinion, there are 3 ways for agents to handle a short sale: 1) Become the dedicated short sale expert yourself. 2) Work with a dedicated short sale team. or 3) Stay away from short sales. And just an observation from this discussion,the missing piece: If the homeowner cannot qualify for a hardship, the bank will kill the short sale, so a short sale listing really means nothing without a verifiable hardship. Save time and frutration. Send the potential seller to a HUD-approved counselor first. If they qualify, then list the house as a short sale. Some of them may even qualify to stay in their home, generating goodwill toward the agent, who did not waste anyone's time, including their own. Best regards, Tom
I agree with my neighbor, Denny Grimes. Natural laws of supply and demand are at work, pushing prices down and unit sales up. But another natural law is also at work, the law of diminishing returns. Too many foreclosures are still happening, for a variety of reasons. Each housing unit added to a lender's foreclosed inventory forces prices down further. It's good to see that unit sales are up. But since the vast majority of sales in my local area are sold by a handful of lenders to cash buyers, do the stats have real relevence to the average Joe home seller and home buyer? All average Joe knows is that he can't sell his house for what he owes on it because the lenders are forcing all this low-priced excess inventory on the street. And average Joe can't buy a house because the lenders aren't lending due to the their assets tied up in excess inventory on the street. In my opinion, the lenders overall mishandled the origination of many of the home loans now defaulting. And they are still mishandling many of the loans instead of admiting and paying for their mistakes. Until the lenders find a way to get out of the real estate asset business, they will continue to make all of us pay for their mistakes. Best regards, Tom
Fannie & Freddie should be congratulated on their 76% increase in loan mods in 4Q08, resulting in the 27% decrease in foreclosures. Now if they would only put that kind of effort into approving short sales, we could possibly see a 50% decrease in foreclosures. I live and work in the #3 metro area. The majority of sales here are "corporate" owned repo's or REO's. The REO's are selling for about half of what the lender's are demanding for short sale approval. So every failed short sale results in twice as much loss to the lender. And every REO added to inventory further drives down pricing by the natural law of supply and demand. Will Fannie & Freddie be the first to recognize that reduction in foreclosures makes profitable (by reduction of losses) business sense? I hope so. And I hope they can share that with all the lenders who are continuing to crush the real estate market by making bad business decisions. Best regards, Tom
