Oh how the real estate world continues to change. A year ago the focus was on foreclosure properties and how to get into an over crowded niche. Now as 2009 starts to wind down the new niche is short sales. Short sales are a different breed but appear to be here for the next 3 - 5 years as so many homeowners are upside down in mortgages obtained during the boom. Every other agent in our market claims to be a short sale specialist or short sale certified but still I see over and over every day these so called experts handle these transactions completely wrong. The same thing happened a year ago with foreclosure properties and agents that were telling asset management companies how much experience they had and how great they were at taking care of their properties. What we saw was a huge number of properties with grass 2 feet high, mold growth due to utilities that were never turned on, homes filled with trash, properties grossly under valued by agents, and agents who got so lazy and comfortable with their business that they couldn't even take a phone call from another agent and insisted all communication be through email. Now with short sales we see many of the same problems from these so called experts. Agents who under value a property, have sellers negotiate numerous contracts even when ratified, submit evry single offer received to the buyers lender even though they should only be submitting the one that was accepted, not obtaining all the documents needed by the buyers lender which in turn either causes delay or creates the deal falling out and a homeowner ending up in foreclosure, etc.

How do we sort out the so called experts from real experts? There must be a way to sift through these agents who are ultimatly hurting our markets, business, and reputations. Our office tries to keep agents from doing foreclosure business unless they are educated on the process, and will not allow agents to call themselves short sale experts or certified unless they truely know what they are doing. Our corporate slogan is "The Right Agent Makes All The Difference In The World" and the one thing the market has taught us in the past 4 years is how true our slogan really is.