With all the talk of the $700 billion bailout money being diverted to bail out everyone but homeowners who can't pay their mortgage payments, it's easy to assume you have few options except foreclosure or mailing your keys back to your lender.  Please don't assume that foreclosure is your only answer.  AND please don't make the assumption that your lender will automatically approve a short sale.

Short sales (mortage companies accepting a payoff less than the principle balance) are a viable alternative to a foreclosure.  They have been described as the "brain surgery" of real estate.  There are several steps to a successful short sale and very few Realtors have been properly trained in the current approval process.  Before choosing a listing agent, make sure your Realtor has received extensive training in the process and has several successful short sale approvals under their belt.  Realtors with the CDPE designation (Certified Distress Property Experts) have received the extensive training and average an 82% approval ratio compared with the typical 12% nationwide approval average.

The first step in the process is to determine if your personal situation fits into one of the "allowable financial hardship" categories.  These can include loss of or reduction in income due to business failure, loss of job, military service, or a mortgage interest rate increase and payment increase.  The hardship must be one that we can document with paper.  In fact the approval process for a short sale involves lots of paper.....generally our approval packages range in the 75 to 100 page length!  It will include all of the documentation you originally submitted for approval of the mortgage plus more!

Our job is to package all of your financial information along with extensive documentation to show why the mortgage company will benefit more from accepting a short sale than from taking your home in foreclosure.  Our package will include much more than the typical broker's cma (competitive market analysis).

The mortgage companies are flooded with requests from borrowers who are delinquent and the folks who work in the short sale approval departments (loss mitigation) are overwhelmed with incomplete short sale approval packages.  The documents that a mortgage company will request are not the only documents that are required for approval.  Our goal is to provide every and any document that will compel the mortgage company to approve the request as quickly as possible.  Once a package is received by a mortgage company it is placed in a "review" department.  In some cases we've found that our packages are so complete that our files are being sent directly to a negotiator rather than to the review department.  This simple step can save 10 days to 3 weeks in processing time.

Since obtaining the CDPE extensive training and designations our team has had a 100% success ratio in short sale approvals with the average time from contract to closing averaging about 50 to 75 days.  When you hear about buyers being tied up in escrow waiting for a short sale approval for several months, it's a good guess that the listing agent doesn't understand how to properly submit the file and negotiate on the seller's behalf.

We have more extensive information on short sales on our website at www.YostHomes.com including an interesting chart that shows the difference a foreclosure vs. a short sale on your credit in the future.  This is definately worth viewing if you are unable to continue making your payments.  We have a frequently asked questions section.  Follow this link for more information. Short Sale FAQ's