Yay,
Showings and Offers!
You get
showings, and now an offer comes in. GREAT! How do I think offers on short
sales should be handled? Like any other sale.
Present
all in a timely manner. Encourage your seller to make a decision asap. If they like the offer, have them sign the contract.
We require all contracts to be on the Far/Bar As-Is contract along with the
Short Sale Addendum. We also require a bank letter of funds available or a
pre-approval letter and a copy of the buyer’s escrow check.
What’s
next? First of all, stop taking other offers! After the buyer and seller have
agreed the property is now for all intents and purposes PENDING. Yes, there is
a third party approval required but that DOES NOT mean
that you do not have a CONTRACT. You do. I’m sorry to go off a little here but
this one of my pet peeves. We have buyers write up all of the time to hear
weird things like the following:
1)
Our seller isn’t going to sign – it’s up to the bank
2)
The seller has already accepted 4 other offers, they’re waiting on the bank to
respond
3)
They accepted another offer last week
ETC.
My response to each:
1) Then
we don’t have a deal. I will continue to look for homes for my buyer. This
obviously makes no sense. The contract is between the buyer and the seller –
the bank is a third party approver only. Most banks won’t even look at a file
unless all documents are correct and signed/dated and still within timeframes.
2)
Why would you obligate your seller to sell his/her property 4 times? Again, I’m
going to find my customer something else. This is a waste of time. I get what
the agent is trying to do. For lack of better terms, ‘have their cake and eat
it too’. If one buyer gets tired of waiting, they’ll have possibly 3 more in
line. I get that but it is not done correctly. You can have one offer you are
working on and 3 back up offers but not 4 contracts on the same house. That’s
utterly ridiculous.
3)
Really, then WHY is it not marked pending or active contingent short sale
(that’s our MLS’s new rules for short sales that have been agreed on (under
contract) but are waiting on bank approval)?
Listing agents: If you want to
play the multiple offer game that is fine. I realize you want your seller to go
with the most likely offer to get accepted and be able to close. That’s a
no-brainer. But you have to disclosure what you are doing. Like many bank owned
listings, they’ll say “We will be accepting offers for 5 days before we’ll get
an answer from the bank. At that point the bank will most likely ask for
everyone’s ‘highest and best offer’.” My response: GREAT, here’s my buyers
offer. It expires in 6 days. At least they know what they are doing. That makes
sense!
We look forward to working with
the other professional real estate agencies on short sales and the many buyers
and sellers as well.
Yours in Success,
Susan Milner
Florida Future Realty, Inc.
888-764-6665 toll free
239-542-8521 local
To read the entire 4 part article: Short Sales
Copyright 2008 Susan Milner
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