Sacramento Expert Short Sale Real Estate Agent

Posts Tagged ‘homes’

Well another happy seller and buyer on this one.  Buyers happy to get their new home right before the holidays. I wanted  to mention that when working short sales on the buyer or seller side how important it is to know what you are doing.  This situation could of been a problem from the beginning as there were tenants on in the property. 

 Making sure the tenants were going to be prior to closing the deal is very important to a buyer, as they will then become the landlord to these tenants after recording the sale. This could be a deal breaker to the buyers especially if they wanted to occupy the property. The lien holder on a short sale does not care about tenants on the property, they only care about closing the deal according to their acceptance of the short sale. 

I have heard from so many people that Realtors here in Sacramento do not, or are not willing to show a short sale or even list one.  Their loss was my gain on this one.  Realtors better change with the times or their business will not get any better for them.

So when your trying to sell or buy a short sale with tenants on the property make sure that the seller has given proper notice to the tenants to vacate the property, or worked out a settlement prior to closing in writing and have a back up plan in place.

Make sure the buyers are in complete understanding of what could happen in a worse case scenario which affects their ability to buy or delay moving into their new home.

In this case everything worked out great for both sides, although there were some rough area’s of concerns.  It did come down to a legal document being drawn up to get the tenants out prior to closing.  The tenants moved out 2 days prior to closing. Too close for comfort. Every Realtor needs to protect their clients best interest. Know all the facts and present this information upfront.

Terri Wisecarver

Sacramento Real Estate

twre.info@gmail.com

www.twre.info

A down hill spiral is inevitable, therefore I often have a lot of sellers asking me whom pays the back taxes I owe, and do I have to pay for you to sell my home as a Short Sale??   Of course I then begin a conversation that will hopefully give the seller more knowledge in which to base a decision on selling the home or just walking away from the mortgage.

There are of course many people that make money on the sale of a Short Sale, just like they would if anyone else was buying or selling a home.  But in the case of a Short Sale the seller does not pay the commissions, or back taxes.  Sellers are always concerned about if they are having to come up with any money at the close of escrow. At the time of the listing agreement I do ask my sellers if they owe for delinquent water,sewer and garbage because the lien holder will not pay this at closing. If it is a large amount this could be an issue. I always ask the seller to keep the utilities on because it is hard to sell property if nothing is on. This also helps when the buyer goes to do their inspections, as they will need to test the water and electric.

Everyone that is involved in the sale of any property or home will make money somehow. 

• Listing Agent, Buyer’s Agent
• The Current Lender ( They avoid the high cost of the foreclosure process )
• Title Companies ( Title Insurance for the seller and buyer)
• The buyers new Lender ( generates new interest income )
• Appraiser’s ( required by the new lender )
• Homeowner Insurance Company ( required by the lender to protect the property )
• Tax Consultants or Attorney’s ( legal advise and tax consultations )
• Buyer ( purchased the home somewhat below market value therefore gaining equity )
• Escrow Company ( processing the legal paperwork )

If you have any questions regarding the possibility of selling your home because you can not make the payments or you have a financial hardship, please contact me and I can hopefully be able to answer any questions you might have.

It never hurts to ask, it only hurts you when you don’t have all the facts or answers you were needing and wish you did.

Terri Wisecarver

Whitman Metropolitan Inc.

Sacramento Real Estate

I received a call from someone on Friday asking if a short sale  is still possible after a Notice of Default has been filed on the property.  Of course it can be done, but time is of the essence here.  At this point this means that you only have a limited time to get offers on the property submitted to the bank ( lien holder) and accepted before the home goes to foreclosure sale at the court house. 

I have actually had short sale listings submitted to the bank and passing through the hands of negotiator after negotiator awaiting an acceptance right upon until 3 days before auction sale date.  The banks want you to wait to ask for an extension on the sale date up until 3-5 days before they will extend the date, because they usually only will grant extensions up until 30 days at a time. On all of my extensions requested I have had them actually extended  ( postponed )out because of the offers submitted to them were to the point of acceptance and approval.  

The banks sometimes want to see the activity of the listing from the beginning up until an offer is submitted.  The sooner you get the Hardship Package together with the offer and submitted to the bank, the better.  Remember you only have 3 months 2o days  ( after NOD has been filed) to get the bank to accept a short sale offer before going to auction sale.

Definition of an Notice of Default:

•  Notice of Default is an instrument (legal document) filed in the public records (county records) giving constructive notice to the public that a seller is behind on their mortgage. If the payments are not made up, then the bank will foreclose on the property.
• NODs ( notice of default ) are public record for 90 days, then a notice of trustee’s sale is published in a newspaper once weekly for 20 days and on the 21st day, the property goes to auction.

If you are behind in payments and know for certain that you are unable to catch up on those payments, then I would suggest talking with an attorney to discuss your situation and what would be the best choice to make at that time to best fit your situation.  These are a few choices you should discuss with an Attorney.

• Modification of current loan
• Short Sale
• Sign over the Deed to the bank
• Foreclosure
• Bankruptcy

Again speak with someone that knows the law as Real Estate Agents do not and should not give advise pretending that they do.

Terri Wisecarver

Sacramento Real Estate

There are many issues that some agents take into consideration when obtaining or doing Short Sales. One of them is that some agents have never done them so they dont know how to. This comes with changing times in the economy and agents now have to take listings anyway they can. Some agents refuse to do them at all and this includes showing short sales to buyers because of the length of time and effort that goes into them.

This is an example of what I have seen in this market with other agents and the handling of Short Sales.

• I personally have learned to handle them myself because I want to know everything about the discussions with the lien holders. I want to be involved to the point that I know everything is getting done exactly to their demand.  I have learned how to communicate with the banks and know exactly what they require upfront so that when the package and offer is submitted to them it is complete.  This makes the transaction push through the banks hands more efficiently.

• Now do not get me wrong on this point, but there are companies out there that offer a service at a price to handle the paperwork and to do the negotiations with the banks for agents, in order to free them up giving them more time to handle more business.  But sometimes you need to be careful with these companies as they charge a price for this service to the Listing Agent at 20% - 30% of their commission.  I hope that the agents do their clients a good service when choosing these companies, and I can only speak from my own experience on this matter.

When I started doing Short Sales I decided to outsource to a company claiming that they had a 99% acceptance rate with negotiations with the banks.  They made me sign an agreement to to pay them 25% of my commission upon the completion of the transaction.  I decided at this point allow this and provided them with the whole package reequired by the bank to them.  After I had tried to contact them after the offer was submitted to them, they would just state that they were in process of working with the bank.  This went on for months.  Sometimes I could not get a phone call back from them with any updates on my file.  Other times they would say that they were doing all they could and the bank was not cooperating with them.  I told them that I wanted more information as to what the bank (lien holder) was really wanting and that I had concerns as the foreclosure process had already been started on this home.  Needless to say, they did nothing on this file. The home ended up going to foreclosure and I had lost the listing.  The bank ended up getting less than the offer I had submitted at the beginning.

• Now there are other independent people out there that are not even agents doing these negotiations for agents also.  They do not have a license and really do not know real estate at all.  They learn also as they go.  Here is the difference. Again from my own experience of seeing this happen first hand.  It is somewhat similar the the loan modification scams that were and still are going on out there.  Seller Beware.  These independent people would sent out flyer’s offering to help you on a short sale and you would call in and make an appointment to talk with them.  When you get to the appointment to meet with them they also have a Real Estate Agent there to discuss what it is they are offering you.  This independent person states that they charge a fee to YOU the Seller for this service that is to be paid UPFRONT and NON REFUNDABLE for them to handle the paperwork and work with the banks for you.  This money would be about $1500.00 out of your pocket and the agent there would list your home as the short sale. This independent person would then work the paperwork through because they were also working for the agent that listed the property and the agent would also give them money upon the sale of the property.  I believe this is illegal from the agents standpoint as an under the table kickback.

I am not saying that agents do not work well with outsourcing to legitimate companies specializing in working these files, I am  just saying that I myself rather work harder for the seller that is in trouble and needs to sell the home, than to pay someone else to do it for me and not know what is going on.  This is my decision only as I feel I am giving my seller the best possible service I can provide.  Make your decisions to sell your home as a short sale based on what is offered to you by the agent to ensure that everything will be carried out the way that will benefit you.

If I can be any kind of kind of assistance to you by answering any questions, please  feel free to contact me at anytime.

Terri Wisecarver

REALTOR

Sacramento Real Estate

REALTOR