I think that the most important thing you can do to survive the short sale process is have patience.  Patience for the seller, the buyer, the other agent and the most important person to have patience for is the bank or mortgage holder.

 At this point, there are so many articles written about how to do a short sale, but the one factor that continues to be the biggest challenge is time.  Hurry up and wait is basically what happens with a short sale.  At a time when emotions are running high for a buyer we ask them to get pre approved by a lender, submit a contract on a short sale and then sit back and wait for 2-4 months until the bank is ready to respond.

Unfortunately my experience in Orlando has property values declining during those 2 month processes and usually what happens is that there are several other properties that come on the market lower then the original offer on the short sale.  The mortgage lenders have been sending out appraisers to the properties that have contracts on them, but the appraisals are sometimes very tough to swallow.

Patience and kindness will get you everywhere with the lender.  Weekly contact with the lenders and a positive non threating conversation will get you almost where you need to be.  In the meantime, you have to hope that your buyer has secured financing for the long run and is patient enough to wait for the outcome.

Now with foreclosures popping up on top of the mortgage persons desk, the short sales get moved to the side until all the pressing issues of the foreclosures are resolved.  More patience.

Thankfully there are buyers willing to wait, lenders willing to save people from foreclosures and Plenty of patience from everyone involved.