You found a patient buyer who submitted an offer. Your Realtor worked night and day getting it approved. You are ready to close this deal and put all this behind you. Make sure you take care of part 2 of negotiating a short sale with your bank.
Most people are so happy to be closing on their short sale property that they forget this all important step. Just because your bank has agreed to let you do this deal does not mean they have agreed to forget about the monies that you are shorting them. Most banks don't bring this topic up at this point. What usually happens is the banks close the deal and you feel like everything is behind you only to find out that a year later they have put a lien on your other home. They have up to 20 years to do this.
The banks have certain criteria they follow to decide if they are going to pursue this outstanding debt and if you have money or other assets they will be trying to recover their money.
The time to negotiate this outstanding balance is when you are getting the short sale approved when you have some leverage. Negotiate that debt down or make it be totally forgiven and while your at it demand that they report this incident in the best possible way to the credit agencies. They have control over this important detail.
The best thing to do is to have an attorney handle these negotiations for you so you come out of this in the best possible way. Banks do this all day long and this is probably your first and hopefully your last time dealing with short sales.
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