Are You Gonna Die on that Natural Hazard Disclosure Hill in this Short Sale?

On which hill do you wanna die? That's an expression I sometimes apply to my business. Because sometimes you've gotta take a stand, especially when you're a Sacramento short sale agent. But taking a stand has consequences. If you're gonna do battle, you take a chance on being killed. Not literally, of course. So I choose my hills for my battles. I can't always choose my battles because adversity goes hand-in-hand with Sacramento short sales. No way around it.

But the hill on which I'm gonna die, you betcha. And there's a good chance I'm not gonna die. I like to pick the hills where I have the advantage. Where I can see the opposition coming from miles away. And maybe I have an arsenal tucked away on the other side of the hill that is out of sight. I'll wait until the negotiator gets up close to the bottom of my hill and then I might drop a bag of flour on his head and follow that up with a blast from the garden hose. You don't know what I'm capable of doing.

To the negotiator, I am one of 500 files. To me, the negotiator is one of 100 files. See, the odds are in my favor. Plus, I care more. I care about the seller; I care about justice; and I care about closing the transaction -- 3 things the negotiator does not care about. Again, there is more in my favor.

You may think short sales should not be adversarial, but I wish it wouldn't rain so much in Sacramento over the winter. If we don't get rain, though, we suffer. We need rain.

I know there are agents out there in Sacramento who simply roll over when the bank's short sale negotiator tries to kick them in the head. These agents don't want to deal with negativity. They are like a millipede. You poke them with a twig and they curl up.

Take the natural hazard disclosure, for example. In California, the natural hazard disclosure is required by California Civil Code, and the seller must give it to the buyer. You'll find the verbiage in Sections 1103 to 1103.14. Sellers have to buy the disclosure from a disclosure company, and that can cost $99 to $125 or so. Bank negotiators don't always understand California law so they try to exclude this fee from the HUD. But it must remain.

You Sacramento short sale agents should not back down from this. You give us all a bad name when you do. Yeah, it's $100. But the next thing is 500 bucks or 1,000 bucks or 10,000 bucks. I say protect your sellers and go to bat for them. Do things the right way and not just the easy way.