Are you living through a short sale? Representing the Seller? It takes a ton of patience and skill to weather the endurance race mistakenly called a "short sale". There is nothing short about it.
My experience began with a listing that was inherited from a agent who had promised a Seller to perform a discounted commission - sale. The house was beautiful in a rural neighborhood and at the time it was worth the $700,000 it was listed for. The Seller was upside down with a negative amortization loan and no job. It was either sell the house or give it back in a foreclosure. Desparate moves resulted in a major price discount to create offers. The price reduction resulted in a solid offer for $655,000 and began the path to the short sale.
My inexperience in this situation began the frustrating process of dealing with two lenders and negotiate with them to accept an offer where neither lender would get back the principal of their loan. Calling the Loss Mitigation Department of a large lender can be a difficult process. Most often the 800 number goes to a call center and is answered by the next person in line. Rarely will you speak to the same person twice. It is very important that you have the client information documents in order before you get started in this process. Financial records, listing agreement, hardship letter, HUD-1 and other items are necessary before they will even begin talking to you about the process.
When you fax information to the Loss Mitigation Department it goes into a computer and is entered into a file without being managed by a real person. In my experience it took at least 4 attempts to fax the information before they acknowledged receipt. It took about two months of faxing and calling before I was able to speak with the person who would be dealing with me to negotiate this transaction. If you have two lenders you will need to deal with two companies in the same process.
Half way through the transaction I was encouraged to hand the process over to a local law firm who specialized in escrow and short sale negotiation. I would like to tell you that this was a superior process but sadly it was not. The communication between the law form and my client was difficult at best. If the law firm worked directly with the client and negotiated on their behalf it might have been easier but in my case I was in the middle and my client of 12 months expected me to be their advocate during the process.
It has been five months since we received our offer and thankfully the buyer was able to delay their closing and allow the process to work its way through the system and eventually close. We are not yet closed but the end is in sight. I recommend to any agent wanting to get involved in a short sale to educate themselves prior to jumping into the process. Take classes, read information about the subject and seek experienced support or make mistakes and jeopardize your sale and commission.
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