It has come to my attention that more and more brokers in Colorado are doing short sales. This is great as homeowners need good professionals whom they can trust.   Real estate is a very competitive field in general, but we need to really look after each other and our State as a whole.  Even more importantly we need to look after our clients.

Recently I signed up with a company based out of California who gave me 2 short sale leads. This company informed me that a condition of my obtaining the leads was that they were to negotiate the short sale for me and I would just need to list it.  I was a bit skeptical at first, but took the short sale listing subject to.

Short sales are not easy for the most part, but a good short sale agent can certainly make things a lot easier for the seller client.  After I had listed the property and the sellers had submitted their short sale package in full the short sale itself was delayed several times due to the unprofessional and unprepared company from California claiming to know how to do short sales nationally.

A few things they are doing wrong are

•·         Sending incomplete packages (although the seller provided the documents)

•·         Sending the package 30 days after an offer was received

•·         Having out of state title companies prepare HUD's

•·         Failure to communicate with the listing agent

•·         Failure to follow up with the mortgage company

•·         Failure to follow up with the seller

This makes everyone look bad. Recently, our state passed a law that one must be a "licensed Colorado mortgage broker" to do loan modifications in Colorado.  There has also been a lot of talk about being a "licensed Colorado real estate agent or broker" to negotiate short sales.  I would encourage agents and brokers to write their local real estate commission to make this an official rule/law in our state.

After talking to companies doing national short sale negotiations I learned that the reason they are preying on others states is because their state is oversaturated with agents that they need to make money in other markets.  I also learned that these companies are charging $1000 to do a short sale. This is not a valid reason to be working in a distressed market when a seller is already distressed.  Please help in keeping these predator companies out of the marketplace.