All signs point towards 2012 being a significant year, in terms of the real estate market gaining a lot of clarity with respect to the movement of shadow inventory (foreclosed, bank-owned homes, pre-foreclosures, short sales and homes heading towards a foreclosure "sale date").

If you're a buyer, you have the perfect buyer's storm to navigate through and come out smelling like a rose! Inventory, competition in the marketplace and resulting downward pressures on home values, more short sales, more foreclosures and historically low mortgage interest rates all make for an exciting moment in history to be a buyer in the real estate market! Now is the time for you to find a great house and get a great deal, with a very low mortgage rate and enjoy an affordable house payment!

However, if you're considering selling, you have some very sobering realities headed your way. It is expected that this year we will see lenders begin to push through their shadow inventories more aggressively. This means that you must decide how badly you want to cling to your fantasies that your home is worth "X" and that you won't sell for any price below "X" because you truly know and believe that your home is worth it and you'll get it and you'll enjoy the benefits of holding out if need be, and you'll laugh all the way to the bank! Good luck with that strategy!

The bottom line is that we are coming up on the busier season and you will therefore have more competition on the market. Also, as banks work through the process of either modifying existing loans or encouraging their borrowers to seek a short sale listing or risk being foreclosed upon, you will see a large swell in the marketplace of short sales, and also foreclosed homes hitting the market. This only adds inventory to the marketplace and also puts immense pressures on home values in general, thus making it a challenge for conventional sale hold-outs who insist on waiting for that magical buyer to bless them with a contract sales price of "X", when many similar homes within a half mile radius may actually be selling for "X-20%".

As as seller, I would encourage you to simply be honest with yoursef regarding your overall situation and your ultimate objectives, and then make an informed decision to execute a sales strategy that helps you nail your objectives.

As a seller, are you a conventional sale with substantial equity? If so, and if you do not have to sell but would like to sell, then you have the luxury of holding out for "X" dollars, but don't forget that your home may just sit and bake in the sun as buyers keep moving on and viewing and submitting offers for more competitively priced homes. Whether you like it or not, it's a buyer's market right now!

If you are extremely tight on your equity position, and especially if you have to sell for some reason, you should be consulting with a short sale listing expert, such as myself, so that you can understand what your options are! Trust me when I tell you this; you do not want to start intentionally missing payments because you think that you are supposed to have missed multiple payments before you will ever be approved for a short sale! This is not at all the reality of the marketplace. Missed and/or late payments will damage your credit score! I have personally executed short sales for clients who have never missed a payment and never made a late payment! Provided you can show some form of a hardship that helps the bank to justify the need for and to allow a short sale, then you can get a short sale approved (depending on the lender and the circumstances of the hardship), without ever having missed a payment.

If you are underwater on your home's mortgage, and you can no longer afford the payments, it is extremely wise to seek help ASAP from a short sale listing expert. Do not miss month after month of payments and then decide to seek help once your lender is threatening you with foreclosure! Let me ask you this; would you rather have your lender seek a deficiency judgment against you for $25K or for $50K? Silly question, but that's exactly the potential damage you could be asking for by delaying the execution of a short sale! The longer you wait the more competition on the market and the more downward pressure on your home's value. Let's assume your lender agrees to a short sale and also agrees not to pursue you for any deficiency amount. Now, same question; would you rather your lender issues a 1099 with your name on it to the IRS for $25K or for $50K? That's exactly the risk we're talking about if you delay making an informed decision to pursue a short sale ASAP in today's real estate market.

If you are someone who has waited too long and you have a "foreclosure sale date" set by your lender, then you are obviously in a very difficult position. There is a possibility of a "Hail Mary pass to the end zone", depending on how close you are to the sale date, and your lender's willingness to work with you at this point. You would need to list your home as a short sale immediately, and position it aggressively in the marketplace to secure a contract ASAP and get it, along with a preliminary HUD and all other required paperwork to your lender ASAP. In doing so, your chosen, brilliant short sale listing agent would get on the phone with your lender and respectfully request a suspension of the foreclosure sale date so as to allow the bank to review the short sale offer and paperwork that was submitted. This is a difficult situation and it won't always work. However, I have been able to successfully execute a "5 seconds left in the game, and a Hail Mary pass to the end zone" strategy that resulted in a successful short sale and a foreclosure averted for my seller clients. It's stressful, exhausting and unnecessarily nerve-racking and it can be avoided if sellers simply face reality and seek help earlier than later!

All too often, I see the "conventional sale/strong equity" sellers make a huge mistake by holding out for "X" dollars (an amount at or beyond the highest possible thresholds of current fair market value). It almost always bites them in the end, as they end up conceding and selling for what I told them their home would eventually sell for, and all they did was burn months off the calendar!

Remember, you may not get as much as you wanted in the sale of your home, but if you turn around and leverage the buyer's market in your favor, you'll make up for it on the buy side!

It is critical to understand today's market if you are considering selling your home. Most experts agree that the shadow inventory is going to begin moving through the market this year. Sellers need to make educated, informed and strategic decisions so as to successfully navigate today's challenging real estate market.

Kirk Westervelt, BA, CDPE, SFR, REOS, BPOR

Keller Williams Realty

Greenville, SC

(864) 451-2402

As a short sale listing agent in Greenville, SC I see and hear all types of scenarios, circumstances, excuses and even "strategies" with respect to how people think about and handle short sales.

My best advice is to not waste any time and don't overthink the process. Also, don't leverage a short sale innappropriately, as a way to play games with the mortgage lender and "buy more time" to stay in the house.

Here's why:

If you qualify for and you've chosen to pursue a short sale, it's safe to assume you're doing it because you care about your financial health, your credit score, your overall indebtedness and basically, you'd like to get on with your life and put this situation behind you, with the best possible outcome for you and your family....right?

Assuming I'm not crazy, and your motives and intentions are in-line with the statement above, then why would you want to trash your credit score with missed and/or late payments? Why would you want to increase the size of any potential deficiency judgment against in you in the future? That's exactly the fire you're playing with if you prolong the short sale process, or delay getting started with the process. Why? The answer is simple, because there is a huge amount of short sale and foreclosure inventory that has yet to hit the market and when it does, we will experience increased downward pressure on home values. With this increase in distressed property inventory and an oversupply of homes for sale and an undersupply of qualified buyers, the distressed properties will inevitably sell for less and less as the market absorbs the inventory.

Simply put, the longer the delay in executing a successful short sale, the lower the fair market value and eventual sale price will be, thus increasing the delta between what is owed on the mortgage and what the final NET amount to the lender actually is, thus increasing any potential deficiency judgment amount in the future. Therefore, any unnecessary delays today could result in more pain later!

I recently took another short sale listing, to help the homeowners avoid foreclosure. I ran the comps, reviewed the first and second mortgage loan payoff amounts and devised an intelligent starting list price. Additionally, my client clearly understood my recommended list price reduction strategy, based on a specific timeline, the surrounding active listings in the immediate area, the number of missed payments on the mortages and even seasonal market trends and short-term forecasts.

So, what happened when it came time to implement the first price reduction? My client disagreed with any such reduction and wanted the home to remain very close to the initial list price....of course!

And what did the initial list price reveal to us? It revealed what I knew from the very beginning; we did not have a single showing and/or a single offer to purchase. Yet, I agreed to start at a price which would otherwise avoid the need for a short sale, to appease my client's desires and strategy.

Meanwhile, my client is wasting precious time in a market which is about to experience a substantial rise in short sales and foreclosures.

Until the bank receives an initial contract/offer to purchase and performs a BPO valuation on the property, we won't know what the bottom line numbers are on any given short sale transaction. In the early stages of a short sale, the list price is sort of a moving target, designed to pull in offers and yield some very valuable information from the bank...which is what they are willing to accept as their minimum NET amount on the HUD statement.

Obviously,  this particular client is clinging to the fantasy that the home will sell for a "seller's market" price, in a "buyer's market" and thus avoid the need for a short sale. Unfortunately, every week that passes without any offers to purchase is one week closer to a foreclosure auction sale date!

My next step is to offer a little emotional counseling and help this client get past their mental block of what it is that will actually be necessary to help them avoid foreclosure. They are clearly clinging to hope and fantasy, which is dangerously equivalent to denial and thus impending foreclosure, if they continue to block the progression of this short sale.

Depending on a number of variables, including the number of missed mortgage payments and whether or not there is a foreclosure auction sale date set by the bank, you simply must respect a pre-planned timeline by which you will orchestrate the short sale process for success.

At the end of the day, they hired me as an expert in my field, to help them avoid foreclosure. I have no doubts we'll achieve success, but as with most short sales, there are a plethora of emotions to navigate through on the journey towards accepting reality and achieving short sale success!

On July 13th 8 institutions, including Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Wells Fargo and Citigroup, met a deadline for submitting detailed action plans on how they will be handling distressed mortgage loans (short sales and foreclosures). The details of these plans, submitted by major banks and other home-loan servicers, were handed in to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates national banks. At this point, all details of any such plans to handle massive numbers of short sales and foreclosures are being held confidential.

July of 2011 was also significant as a very large number of loans issued in June of 2006, called 5 year ARM's, finally "turned over" and reset as of July of 2011. These loans featured low teaser rates and the option of interest-only payments for the first 5 years. Many of these borrowers who made interest only payments for the past 5 years are simply under water as their current home values are less than what is owed on their mortgages. If these homeowners can't afford their house payments, and if they can't come to terms with their mortgage lenders in some way then they will be faced with the pursuit of a short sale or they will eventually be faced with the reality of a foreclosure.

With mortgage interest rates climbing higher, the pool of buyers will shrink. Likewise, any existing pool of buyers will see their purchasing power shrink, as mortgage interest rates climb higher.

As we consider all these realities in the marketplace converging, it appears obvious that we will all experience downward pressures on home values, a phenominal "buyer's market" and more "growing pains" for the real estate market to endure throughout this fall and well into 2012.

While this is a phenominal time for investors to engage their long term plans for building wealth with today's real estate market, it is also a very sobering time for many homeowners who are simply terrified and confused about what the future holds for them.

I foresee a "tsunami wave" of short sale and foreclosure inventory hitting the market in the Greater Greenville, SC and "Upstate" region throughout the second half of 2011 and throughout 2012.

Along with this reality comes an ever increasingly strong renter's market. Thus, the investor activity in buying up distressed properties, rehabbing them and renting them out! When people are displaced from their homes as a result of short sales or foreclosures, they've got to live somewhere! For most people, their only choice is to rent. I was shocked to have heard of what sounded like a record high rent one of my friends and neighbors told me about the other day. They were having a difficult time selling their home for what they wanted, so they rented it out on a two year lease, for an impressive monthly rent amount.

The bottom line is that if you are a homeowner trying to sell your home in today's market with the luxury of choice, then you are very blessed! If you'd like to sell, but don't have to sell....you are very blessed!

However, if you are a homeowner facing foreclosure, if you've missed payments and cannot see yourself catching up on those missed payments and you don't have any such "luxury of choice", then your best option may just be a short sale. An approved short sale by your mortgage lender will have much less severe implications on your life, your finances and your credit than a foreclosure!

The most crucial step for any homeowner who is struggling with their payments or has missed payments recently, is to understand what their options are, including fully understanding what a short sale is, and is not.

Once a homeowner fully understands their options, suddenly things tend to become less scary and less stressful. Many of my short sale clients actually feel relieved once they understand their options and choose to engage the short sale process with me. Many of my short sale clients have told me that after they left the closing table they were overjoyed and filled with relief and they could simply get on with their lives and never stress out again over "that house, that mortgage, that bank, the phone calls from the bank, the letters from the bank and the bank's law firm", etc, etc. When foreclosure is no longer hanging over your head like a dark cloud, life tends to be more enjoyable!

If you are a homeowner who has fallen behind on your mortgage payments, and if you happen to live in the Upstate South Carolina region, including Greenville, Simpsonville, Fountain Inn, Mauldin and Greer, then please take the time to call me so you can understand your options as a homeowner in today's challenging real estate market.

I am confident that as an expert short sale listing agent I can help you!

Kirk Westervelt, CDPE, SFR, REOS

Keller Williams Realty

Van West Enterprises, LLC

(864) 451-2402

kirk@kwrealtyagent.com

Let's face it, everyone wants a great deal in today's buyer's market and an ever increasing majority of the transactions in today's real estate market often involve either a short sale or a foreclosed property.

The problem is that not all realtors are skilled in effectively navigating through the process of either a short sale or a foreclosure. Therefore, they are actually doing their clients a great disservice!

Lately it seems to be almost on a weekly basis I find myself dealing with another realtor in my market who shares with me some variation of the comment; "I've been selling real estate in this market for 25 years...but I don't have a clue how these short sales work".

Being a short sale listing expert in my market, I find myself exceptionally capable of navigating my buyer clients through the many potential pitfalls and challenges of attempting to buy a short sale property. In my experience, it is very rare to see two realtors who handle the short sale process exactly the same way, and/or make appropriate decisions at critical moments throughout the process. This makes for a messy playing field, to say the least!

Likewise, knowing how to work effectively with bank asset managers and following their procedures when dealing with an REO foreclosure property is critical to a successful transaction. It's the smallest attention to details, and respecting unique policies and procedures that can often make or break a deal. Especially if there are competing offers on the table!

Today's real estate market offers an exceptional opportunity to build wealth by purchasing a short sale or foreclosure property below fair market value, with a low interest loan, with little or no money down (via an FHA or a USDA mortgage loan).

Buyers owe it to themselves to be certain they are working with an expert real estate professional who knows how to confidently and successfully navigate through today's buyer's market, and related transactions which is increasingly filled with short sale and foreclosure properties.

I invite any buyers or sellers of real estate in the Greater Greenville, SC region, including Greer, Mauldin, Simpsonville and Fountain Inn, SC, to give me a call. I'm happy to provide you with a quality consultation designed towards understanding your needs and laying out a strategy to help you achieve success in today's challenging real estate market!

Kirk Westervelt

Keller Williams Realty

(864) 451-2402

Absolutely stunning and charming downtown Greenville home with extensive remodeling and upgrades! This 3 bedroom, 2 full bathroom home sits on a large corner lot with mature trees and a level, fenced yard. This home was totally remodeled over the last few years, and includes exception upgrades, improvements and attention to detail! Some of the many custom remodeling efforts include rich, hand-finished hardwoods, newer electrical lines/components and outlets, bold crown molding, recessed lighting fixtures and a new roof was installed November of 2010. The custom kitchen is fabulous for entertaining and includes hand-crafted cabinets with extendable shelving, Santa Cecilia Granite countertops, stainless steel appliances, a secretary/desk counter space along the window ledge, a custom island with built-in space for a wine chiller, and room at both the island and the breakfast bar for barstools. This charming home has a traditional floorplan throughout, except for the kitchen which boasts a custom, open floor plan, leading into the dining room and/or Florida room area. The large living room boasts rich hardwood floors and leads into the hallway with 2 full baths, and 3 large bedrooms. The Master bedroom is accessible from either the kitchen area or the central hallway. The Master bedroom looks out to a charming central courtyard with room for flowers, grass and a patio area fantastic for grilling in the summertime! The Florida room/Dining room area was recently remodeled and includes fantastic windows throughout, letting in tons of sunlight and a cool breeze! Newer, energy efficient windows were installed as part of the overall remodeling of this magnificent home. Huge, 20X20 workshop with various workbenches and power can be used for any number of projects, work, hobbies, storage or recreation. This lovely home is within walking distance to Summit Drive Elementary school, and a great public park/playground. Enjoy all that downtown Greenville has to offer! This charming neighborhood with large lots and mature trees is only minutes to shops, restaurants and all the best the city of Greenville has to offer! Welcome home!

Currently offered for sale, for $219,900.

Please call Greenville, SC Realtor Kirk Westervelt at: (864) 451-2402 for more information, or to view this lovely home.

As a real estate professional, I am constantly working with a diverse network of service providers. It amazes me how much money I can save people when they're contemplating the installation of a new concrete walkway, driveway, extra parking pad, etc. The most popular thing I come across is people craving a "real" patio versus the silly little 10X10 patio they got with the home they purchased. People love having a real patio installed in their yard, off the back door. For example I recently helped someone who wanted a 15X30 patio. Now, they're building a screened porch on it and having tile flooring and ceiling fans installed. They are very happy!

I can help you if you need anything concrete installed, or lumber related projects framed and finished as a home improvement. If you want to install any new concrete...call me! I can save you money! If you want a deck, a screened porch, a fence, a patio overhang, etc., call me! I can save you money! The guys in my network know what they're doing, as they typically build entire houses for a living. I help to find them these side jobs when they're between other major projects, and they're happy to pass along savings to you for these side jobs!

Please contact me if you would like a quote. I can also provide you with photos of recent concrete driveways, extra parking pads, walkways, wood fences, patios, decks and screened porch installation jobs.

Also, if you're looking for an exterior finish on a screened porch or Florida room job to match your home's vinyl siding, brick, roofing, trim and gutters, this is not a problem! Just call me!

Kirk Westervelt

President/CEO

Van West Enterprises, LLC

Realtor - Keller Williams Realty

(864) 451-2402

As a real estate professional, I am constantly working with a diverse network of service providers. It amazes me how much money I can save people when they're contemplating the installation of a new concrete walkway, driveway, extra parking pad, etc. The most popular thing I come across is people craving a "real" patio versus the silly little 10X10 patio they got with the home they purchased. People love having a real patio installed in their yard, off the back door. For example I recently helped someone who wanted a 15X30 patio. Now, they're building a screened porch on it and having tile flooring and ceiling fans installed. They are very happy!

I can help you if you need anything concrete installed, or lumber related projects framed and finished as a home improvement. If you want to install any new concrete...call me! I can save you money! If you want a deck, a screened porch, a fence, a patio overhang, etc., call me! I can save you money! The guys in my network know what they're doing, as they typically build entire houses for a living. I help to find them these side jobs when they're between other major projects, and they're happy to pass along savings to you for these side jobs!

Please contact me if you would like a quote. I can also provide you with photos of recent concrete driveways, extra parking pads, walkways, wood fences, patios, decks and screened porch installation jobs.

Also, if you're looking for a an exterior finish on a screened porch or Florida room job to match your home's vinyl siding, brick, roofing, trim and gutters, this is not a problem! Just call me!

Kirk Westervelt

President/CEO

Van West Enterprises, LLC

Realtor - Keller Williams Realty

(864) 451-2402