Short Sale Commander Announces Modules for Realtors and Title Companies Management of Short Sales
Tucked away in the heart of the most depressed real estate market in the country (metropolitan Detroit), an affiliate group of companies are successfully exploiting the current distressed residential market to their advantage. Indeed, ELK Software’s team of software developers is pretty happy with how they’ve managed to turn lemons (aka – short sales) into lemonade.
ELK Software’s flagship product – Short Sale Commander - is making short sale prospects pay off for loan negotiators all over the country. As bad news continues to flow across the Motor City without letup, ELK and their parent – Distressed Property Partners – fortunes are looking up. The affiliate groups’ team of battled hardened mortgage bankers, real estate professionals and servicing professionals has collectively gained a new lease on life with their opportune market timing. Short Sale Commander’s adoption by leading real estate professionals along with their own success in negotiating and purchasing distressed properties has their group of companies adding employees where others are still cutting back.
At its core, Short Sale Commander is a relatively simple, software tool designed for simplifying the unique steps in processing and negotiating short sale leads from listing to close. They’ve attracted the interest of national title companies and real estate brokers looking to see if ELK can enhance their negotiation centric platform to add features customized for listing and closing agent’s role in this growing industry.
Funded by Distressed Property Partners (DPP), Short Sale Commander’s initial modules were designed to manage every aspect of the loan negotiation process for their in-house purchase of value impaired properties. Since the 1stquarter of 2009, the software has been made available for license to external negotiators – first by word of mouth, then by an official web-launch at www.shortsalecommander.com.
With subscribers growing daily, and penetration in more than 10 states, Short Sale Commander is in a league of their own it what is a fast becoming an industry of specialists looking to extract value from processing short sales. “Our software’s core value is a simplification of the short sale management process. The basic application embodies our step-by-step process of negotiating with lenders and servicers. Enhancing the platform to include front-end features tailored to the needs of realtors and title companies is a natural evolution of our basic negotiating and process management tool” says Erik Lovell, a partner in DPP and Director in both ELK and DPP’s in-house short sale negotiation firm – Short Sale Connect.
The Company is focusing on growing both individual subscribers as well as corporate strategic partners that see the value in their teams using a standardized platform. Much of that interest comes from what seems to be a real dearth of viable tools available on the market for companies with multiple offices or with multi-users, such as the case with national real estate brokerages and title companies. “We’re growing our business because professionals in the real estate community know that value impaired properties and pre-REO short sales cannot be ignored as key listing segments – and, they need to see profits from these efforts and investments. Real estate brokers have dedicated whole divisions and multiple agents to the segment, yet they’re like miners in the Gold Rush without picks. They need our process tools to be able to harvest the leads into closings and make their time and effort count. Short Sale Commander’s multi-user platform simplifies the process” says Randy Tobbe, Director of Business Development for Short Sale Commander.
With a tidal wave of foreclosures flooding regional markets well beyond their home turf in Detroit, Short Sale Commander is seeing business emerge in markets not considered distressed – or even stressed by most standards. For sure, lenders are looking for pre-REO alternatives that can fit into their own data driven loss mitigation models. Short sale statistics, while still difficult to measure, suggest that lender recovery is very often higher when compared to allowing impaired properties and distressed borrowers to fall into full foreclosure. “As we roll out title and realtor modules, our subscribers’ ability to seamlessly interact will significantly increase their sales and closings”, says Lee Moraitis a partner in DPP and CEO of ELK Software. “On the heels of the realtor and title company modules, we are intent on deploying a full enterprise application suitable for national servicers, lenders and investors use. We believe short sales become mainstream when the entire eco-system of negotiator, realtor, title professional and lender are able to share real-world, real time data. That data produces an environment where decisions can be made more efficiently and with confidence.”
Pundits see the growing interest in Short Sales as a practical way to work through the glut of properties that are hung up in markets all across the country. It is common thinking that communities can recover when values stabilize – part of that logic is surely seeking solutions to allow the inventory of distress properties to be processed more efficiently. Adoption of platforms like Short Sale Commander intuitively will likely lead to more listings, more closing and the cycle will repeat until the glut is worked through. “Our standardized platform for the entire short sale process is putting effective tools in the hands of real estate professionals enabling them to handle a volume of files at the click of a button. Title professionals now have the ability to upload HUDs and follow the entire process ensuring proper disclosure to buyer and seller”, adds Lovell. .
ELK Software claims their data reflects that the real estate professionals utilizing Short Sale Commander as a short sale processing and negotiation tool have a closing ratio 5 times the estimated national average which is estimated to be 14%. Their flagship product – Short Sale Commander - is available for demonstration and license over the web at http://www.shortsalecommander.com They expect to release their new modules this summer to existing subscribers.
About ELK Software: Short Sale Commander (http://www.shortsalecommander.com) is ELK Software’s flagship software application developed in Livonia, Michigan. ELK is focused on designing and selling software applications to assist real estate, title, lending and servicing professionals in the management and processing of distressed residential real estate.
About Distressed Property Partners: DPP (http://www.dppcapitalgroup.com) purchases, funds and invests in value impaired residential properties for profit in distressed regions across the US, including – Metropolitan Detroit, Grand Rapids, Las Vegas, Reno/Lake Tahoe, Phoenix, Denver, Atlanta and select markets in Florida.
About Short Sale Connect: Short Sale Connect (http://www.shortsaleconnect.com) is a fee-based short sale management firm that employs experienced negotiators who work with realtors and brokers in managing their listings through the complex process of lead qualification, borrower rating, bpo support, lender negotiation, loan discharge, credit deficiency waivers and closing.
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