Yesterday, after seven months on the market, one of my listings finally sold. The sad part is it sold on the steps of the county court house as a foreclosure. I hate it when that happens. I feel like I failed in my attempts to help this Seller out.
His property was a flip that flopped. It was purchased in early 2006, at $225,000, with a $5,000 down payment. This particular builder sold about 30 of these homes to folks down in south Florida. I had written about here (A dollar short and many days late) and here (help stamp out fraud).
Unfortunately, by the time I took the listing, the property was only worth about $200,000 and we were going to need to negotiate a short sale in order to get it sold. Within six weeks of having it on the market we placed it under contract for $200,000. The buyer was a Mortgage Broker and was willing to give us time to get the short sale approved. The Seller, at my suggestion, hired an Attorney to negotiate the short sale with the Lender.
There were two loans on the property so it was the second lien holder who needed to accept the short. I don't know if they were just swamped with short sales or what but it took almost four months for them to finally, not accept the short, but ask for more information from the Buyer!! The biggest issue was they kept switching account reps on us. We were now dealing with our 5th account rep. Unbelievable. Anyway, by the time they finally got around to working the file, the Buyer had all ready moved on.
To make matters worse, the market values in Poinciana Fl had plummeted, and the property was now only worth about $175,000. We were still determined to do everything we could to get this house sold so we dropped the price to $179,000. No action. The market has crashed in my area and is saturated with pre-foreclosures and desperate Sellers.
About a month ago my Seller received the final foreclosure notice with a date of June 13th for the foreclosure sale to take place. So, in a last ditch effort, we reduced the price to $169,000. Within days we had multiple offers on the property and submitted them to the 2nd lien holder, to try, once more, to get them to accept the short sale, in lieu of foreclosing.
Well, again, they switched account reps on us. We never heard back from them and yesterday it was sold on the court house steps.
I've handled quite a few short sales in my career and this was the very first time that I lost. I'm disappointed. My Seller is kind of relieved that it's over but disappointed the Lender wouldn't work with us. We did everything we could. Now my Seller has to worry about the Lender filing a deficiency judgment against him on the mortgage note and attaching other assets. Of course there is nothing else I can do to help. I was defeated and I'm done. And that's all I have to say about that. Can I have a hug?
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