Coeur d'Alene Real Estate Short Sale Heart Warming Moment - It's not often I have a chance to use the terms "heart warming" and "short sale" in the same sentence! 

 There are so many distressed homeowners right now.  They are embarrassed, ashamed and they tend to suffer in silence.  Frozen in fear.  Not knowing what they can do, not realizing how many others there are that are living the same financial nightmare.  Afraid of their friends finding out.  Wondering what the neighbors will think.  In many cases a short sale is a good solution to get you onto the next chapter of your life.

On September 17th I opened my email and found this message:

You've received a contact message from your Contact Form on the ActiveRain network.  Message details: From: xxxxxxx xxxxxxxxx
Email: xxxxxxxxx@aol.com
Subject: Short Sale (Sent via Activerain)

My wife and I are interested in a short sale of our home. I'm wondering what we need to do to get started with this process, with you as our Realtor. We have researched a little bit and you seem to be very experienced in this area....

I made an appointment with this local police officer and his wife to discuss their situation.  It was a an awful story of being harassed for most of the past year by their mortgage company following a successful loan modification.  There were discrepancies in payment amounts, payments received, the modification details - and these homeowners who had been trying to get this resolved for the better part of a YEAR were getting no help with the resolution.  They were getting up to nine hostile calls a day from the lender's collection department.  But no one would LISTEN to them, or help them.

They were both fighting back tears while we talked.  They had accepted the reality that they were going to lose the modest home they built 8 years earlier, and loved.  They didn't have the means to pay what their lender claimed they needed to bring their mortgage current, although they have records showing they had paid what they had been told they needed to pay.  They had come to the end of their emotional ropes and couldn't hang on any longer.  They were hopeless, which is not a good place to be. They had found a rental and were making plans to move out.  Hoping to avoid foreclosure and make the best of a bad situation, we listed their house as a Coeur d'Alene short sale.

A week later we had a solid offer for full listing price.  A good start.  Nothing left to do but find out if their lender would approve them for a short sale, and at what price.  After their grueling and frustrating experience trying to get someone to sort out their mess this past year, they were realisticly expecting the worst. A process that drug out forever.  Short sale terms and conditions that they couldn't meet. 

Today I received the approval letter.  Accepted offer.  No harsh terms or conditions, just a request for a notarized Arms Length Transaction form and a closing within 30 days. 

I made the call to my Seller.  As I told her the news, she broke down on the other end of the line.  She was overcome with a huge flood of relief after such a prolonged period of mental exhaustion. 

I may not have found a cure for cancer today, or pulled someone from a burning building.  But to this frazzled homeowner I was a hero.  A hero, because I had simply helped her find a resolution to her nightmare.  Because FINALLY someone was willing to listen, and help. 

Please, if you just can't keep up your mortgage payments and think you have no option but foreclosure, contact me!  I can help you explore your options, whether it be a loan modification, short sale or something else, and advise you as to a course of action to bring the best possible outcome to a bad situation.