Reposted from my Short Sale Industry Blog Located Here:
http://josephalfe.com/
Pending home sales – a measure of mortgage contracts signed and an indicator of possible home closings – in November increased 7.3% from October, reaching its highest level in 19 months, according to the National Association of Realtors.
This can be viewed as good news, even though the total number is below the number from this time last year, because of the artificial bump in sales due to the home purchase tax credit which has expired. This information must be viewed through the lens of home prices though, which will give a real indicator of what is truly driving the market.
According to the latest S&P/Case-Schiller report, home prices declined 1.1% and 1.2% for the 10- and 20-city composite indexes. Prices across the 20-city composite also fell, averaging an 18 percent decline nationwide. Of the 20 metropolitan areas Standard & Poor’s studies, 14 showed record rates of annual decline. Add to the Core-Logic report that 46% of US homes are underwater, a figure that I believe to be very conservative, and you can see that while home sales my be going up, home prices continue to decline as lenders churn through the backlog of foreclosed REO inventory and short sales. With short sale volume increasing, it is easy to see that the US housing market is being driven by short sales.
This is an important metric to understand. Real estate professionals, brokers and agents must know by now that getting into the short sale game is not a decision to be made lightly-It’s a matter of survival.
The question should not be whether or not to get into the short sale market, but rather Do I have enough knowledge to properly serve my sellers and avoid potential liability?
For a more complete discussion of an agent or brokers liabilities when dealing with short sales, please read my article: http://josephalfe.com/2011/11/short-sale-road-rules-should-you-be-doing-short-sales/
Suffice to say, Agents and brokers need to be asking themselves whether it is worth keeping short sales “in house” with their agents, who are most likely not qualified to handle them, or take a leap of faith and outsource short sale processing to a third party negotiator or attorney. A third solution is for a broker to develop an in house but separate short sale negotiation team. This can allow a broker to closely oversee the process, yet manage liability.
Whether you decide to obtain detailed short sale instruction for your agents, outsource the short sale processing to a third party, or develop your own internal short sale negotiation department, Joseph Alfe Consulting can design a plan to achieve these goals.
Want to see more? Visiti http://josephalfe.com
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