I was on the phone with an agent the other day who made a good point of highlighting the fact that there seems to be a rising number of people "specializing" in Short Sales and Investments now. His comment was, "You're an expert when you say you are...", which, the more online exploring I do, seems to be the case.
To make light of it, here are some doozies I thought some of you would get a kick out of:
- "You can own a home now with or without credit and I will personall show you how. Email me for mor informaton."...going on to say "The home below aquired wit no money down and no credit !!!" The post then requested you send $10 to start your training, from a dowloaded instruction booklet.
$10 to start my training "wit" you? (Yes, all that was the actual spelling) Gosh, if I had only known it was THAT easy and cheap...Where do I sign up?!
- Another post requested $2,000 to be a part of a new investor group(in a very established city with several well-known groups already), in which all the members would then decide what property to invest in. (When's the last time you got 20 people to decide on ANYTHING?) Let alone that's the down payment for....one house? Good concept, however....probably going to take more than one house between 20 people to get a decent ROI...
Okay, okay, I'll quit knocking their efforts, but my point is....with an influx of information being out there now, housing markets shifting, banking standards changing on almost an HOURLY basis, where do you go to get SOLID information on how to process and close Short Sales/buy investment property?
My OPINION is (and, it's just that), is to reference industry professionals that have the knowledge, accreditation, and most importantly, the TRACK RECORD to back their claims. Not to say that there aren't people who are new(er) to the industry that have gravitated to Short Sales becuase they see the opportunity, and have been successful. In some cases, it IS the greener professionals that know that to be successful, adaptation is NECESSARY, not a luxury.
But, getting back to my point, of, please check and double check your resources when gathering information/training on Short Sales. For those agents of you in Active Rain land, I know you care about your homeowners, and have a responsibility to them. They are trusting you to guide them through a very convoluted and drudgerous process, and are looking to you for professional insight and honest expectations about the potential outcome of their situation.
As a company, we are actively closing 1-2 short sales a day, and on average have 30-40 Million in escrow every month. We are in good standing with the BBB, and are operating only in the states, under strict legal guidelines in which our (very) expensive lawyers have given us the go ahead. We've been at this for over 7 years, and counting, and pride ourselves on delivering results with integrity.
So whether we end up working together or not, my call to action is be aware of who we are taking information from, how we are utilizing it, and how it affects our industry/clients. Goodness knows homeowners have been beat up enough....let's ban together to give them options to get out of this mess, even if it's one at a time.
To your success,
Tracy Royce
Live Free Investment Group
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