Buyer Agents: tired of getting frustrated when dealing with short sales for your clients? Here are some good tips from NAR, as well as information on how to get the Ethical Homes Short Sale Checklist (for making sure that you’re not wasting your time on a short sale with no chance of closing) and the Ethical Homes Bank-Influenced Property Disclosure (for making sure that your clients know what they’re getting themselves into when they start looking at short sale and post-foreclosure properties).
NAR recently compiled some of their recent tips and tools for agents dealing with short sales; I’ve found the Buyer Handout on that page to be particularly useful in giving buyers an overview of the short sale process.
In my experience, though, the majority of short sales are still “fake” ones, where the listing agent either doesn’t know what they are doing or is working with an unrealistic seller or uncooperative lienholder(s), and which thus will have a very low chance of actually going to closing any time soon (if ever). I’ve put together a checklist of the questions that I recommend asking every short sale listing agent, and that I’ve found helps screen out almost all of the “fake” listings pretty efficiently.
Once you’ve found the legit short sales to look at, you also need to make sure that your clients know about the many ways that a short sale purchase is legally and logistically riskier than a traditional purchase. Having looked at literally dozens of different bank addenda used in short sale and foreclosure transactions, I’ve put together the Ethical Homes Bank-Influenced Property Disclosure, which enumerates most of the contract changes that the short sale or REO bank might require/request. You can present the disclosure to your buyer and have them sign it before they have you prepare an offer on a bank-influenced property, to confirm that they understand all of the potential pitfalls lying ahead of them; doing so serves three purposes: it reduces the amount of time that you spend on preparing short sale offers for buyers who aren’t serious about them but are hoping for an unrealistic bargain (since the disclosure makes it clear to most of them that any monetary bargain is usually offset by a corresponding increase in risk); it can help protect you as an agent from potential blame down the line if your buyer proceeds with the short sale purchase, things go awry, and they don’t remember your cautions about the potential hazards involved; and it helps make your buyers more comfortable with both you and the process when the inevitable issues with a short sale purchase do crop up.
If you’d like a copy of the Ethical Homes Short Sale Checklist or the Ethical Homes Bank-Influenced Property Disclosure, let us know and we’d be glad to send them to you.
Possibly related posts (automatically generated):
- Lease/Purchase: An Alternative For Buyers Who Have Recently Done A Short Sale
- FHA announces new guidelines for post-short-sale mortgages
- How Long Do You Have To Wait After A Short Sale Before You Can Get A New Mortgage?
- Inquire About Your Eligibility For A Loan After A Short Sale
- New Feature: Bargain Buy Spotlight
- CRESPA Update confirms Virginia buyers’ rights to choose Settlement Agent
- Find A Buyer Agent
- How Ethical Homes’ Mortgage Team Helps Buyer Agents Close More Deals
- An Overview of Buyer Agency In The Metro DC Area
- Fannie Mae Will Pay Closing Costs On Certain Post-Foreclosure Sales
The Short Sale Lawyer
on Dec 14th, 2009
@ 2:57 am:
I have been serving Realtors, Investors and Homeowners for over 10 years; and it is great to see information out there that one makes sense and two that is accurate. I tip my hat off to the writer and poster of this blog.