Wall Street Journal reported today that the amount of seriously delinquent loans is still a major concern despite news of improvements in the real estate market.

Demand for bank owned homes, short sales, and regular sales have never been higher that what we have seen in the past two months.  Inventory of homes for sale in Manatee and Sarasota county have hit their lowest level in years.

As of the first of April, there were less than 3,500 total units for sale in Manatee county.  With almost 900 of those homes going under contract in March, that puts our supply of homes into the appreciation range.  3 months of inventory is a sign that prices will be going up, and in certain neighborhoods that has been occurring.

Balance that against the almost 30,000 homes in some stage of foreclosure in Sarasota and Manatee, and the almost 18% of of Florida homeowners that are seriously delinquent a long term problem with foreclosures is not going to be going away anytime soon.

Yesterday I showed three Bank owned homes for sale in Bradenton.  None were on the market for over a week, and all three already had multiple offers.  That is remarkable amount of demand for bank owned homes for sale.

Bank of America and Chase have really taken a lead role in getting through the back log of foreclosures in the Sarasota / Bradenton home market.

I had closed a Chase short sale earlier this year where the seller was able to get a 25,000 dollar cash incentive to go through with a short sale.  What is more remarkable is that that homeowner was short selling an investment / rental home for sale.  Typically most of the government short sale programs including HAFA really are only designed to help homeowners short sale their primary homes.

Chase and Bank of America offer these cash incentive programs for a certain group of homeowners in Florida.  However this is a soft marketed program so not all him owners that are considering a short sale know that the program exists.

My BEST advice is to contact your lender, ASAP, and see if your home loan would qualify for the cash incentive programs that exist. I think that more under water homeowners could really prevent a foreclosure and use this cash incentive program to help them secure an alternative housing plan renting for a few years, and then being able to buy later on.

If you have any questions about doing a short sale, loan modification, please feel free to give me a call text, or email.  I would be happy to give you any advice that I could to help navigate the confusing process of a short sale.

My Team and I have over 200 closed short sale transactions closed over the past 6 years.  We are short sale experts for Sarasota and Manatee County.   We are always ready to help our next customer