At the time of writing this there have right around 600 properties listed year to date (2011 first quarter), in Corona - CA, with a list price of $100 - 999k . Let's delve into this and see how many were short sales, standard sales, and REO's shall we?. One thing first... Please note that out of these properties about 100 had no specified "sale type"; so for the purpose of this investigation, random reviews of those 100 properties revealed that they were 70% short sales and 30% standard sales. So, with that taken into consideration, here's how it all pans out...

• Short sales accounted for 48% with a total of 290


• Standard sales accounted for 38% with a total of 232


• REO's accounted for 14% with a total of 87

Short Sales account for 48 percent of 609 listings!

Those are amazing figures aren't they? Nearly half of the homes that have been put on the market this year are short sales. A year ago, if a potential client was looking at short sales, I would have said no way, I'm not gonna' show them to you [they are a complete waste of time]; but the story is different now... If you want to sell houses in Corona, then you'd better get used to the idea of showing short sales. If you don't like the idea of that, you might as well put your license in a drawer!

What can be done about this short sale dilemma...

The writing is on the wall; all you can do is cave to the idea of showing your clients short sale properties... However, with all kinds of authority figures reporting that short sales only have a 10-30% of getting done; are there any tools to assist all parties involved in the process of doing a short sale (primarily upside down borrowers/homeowners)? After all if half of the market (listings anyway) are short sales, then you'd be doing O.K. if you could approach sellers with the idea that your closing rate was significantly higher than 10-30%. One rersource I've found that has helped a bunch is Short Sale Assist.org, which has numerous articles, tools, and a pretty nice forum that provided a wealth of information. Oh, and they also have an agent directory of "USAP" (United Short Sale Assistance Program) certified listing agents (for all you sellers!). Trust me, you owe it to yourself to take a look at this very helpful website that has a ton of short sale information.