The Journey: West Chester Ohio Home Sold By The Liz Spear Team of RE/MAX Elite
If at first you don't succeed, try again! We had this home listed in 2009 and it was immaculate! Pottery Barn style, great presentation, half acre lot on a cul de sac street, 3 bedrooms, 3 full baths and a large crawl space. And we got VERY close to selling it, but two different occasions buyers got cold feet and backed out of the deal. At the same time the Cincinnati area real estate market continued to deteriorate, and what made best sense for the sellers was to lease the home and wait for a better day.
Fast forward five years and our out of state owners reached out to us to take a look at the property for them because it's time to sell, and a short sale if need be. We visit, and the news isn't good. The home that used to be immaculate, wasn't. The paint was worn, tile detached in one of the showers, a hole in the drywall, carpet worn through at some of the thresholds, overall the home just looked worn out. And our sellers had no funds to get it back to perfect, and even if they did, we still couldn't have gotten them out without a check at the closing table.
We did make a brief try at full value if for no other reason than to document to the bank that we'd made the attempt to get full loan value. And of course, it wasn't happening. We switched gears to a short sale, which for us always includes the recommendation to engage a real estate attorney named Tim Abbott. Tim handles the legal aspects and dealing with the bank, we handle the marketing, client contacts, showing the home, negotiating the contract with the buyer, etc. Partnering with Tim has always worked for us.
And we quickly had some "fishing" type offers that common sense said would never get past the bank. But within 60 days we had an offer that we felt good about being approved as a short sale by the bank. Ultimately, the buyer bumped up his offer to $129,000 and we had to win an appeal against the bank's counter of $146,000 (the BPO they used was so far off it was laughable...except it really wasn't funny). We won the appeal and perhaps the bank realized that the five most recent comparable sales by owned by banks had all sold BELOW $100k, so they'd better take the $129,000 and run with it rather than proceeding with the scheduled foreclosure!
So with that, we completed the 51st single family home short sale in Butler County in 2014. That's a pretty low number of short sale success when considering overall sales are 1633 single family homes sold so far this year in Butler County.
Closing was held last week, three months after receiving the offer, even with the attorney, working through the bank can still be pretty slow!
Calling Mrs. Seller and giving her the great news that the burden was removed was one of the best phone calls we've gotten to make in years!
So while short sales may not be a niche we actively pursue, we know our strengths and weaknesses, and bring in the help we need to make sure our clients are well served. And by the way, the attorney's fees didn't have to be paid by the seller, but were covered by the bank as part of the short sale settlement.
So regular sale or short sale, The Liz Spear Team of RE/MAX Elite can help you, but first we need you to call us at 513-520-5305 or email Liz@!LizSpear.com!
We look forward to hearing from you!
Liz and Bill aka BLiz
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