December 2011

1. Your friends and family. While they always mean well and may have even gone through a short sale before, there are just too many variable involved in every short sale. No two short sales are truly alike.
2. The media. The news may be interesting, but journalists write to entertain. They are not short sale specialists.
3. Realtors without short sale experience. Without SIGNIFICANT experience listing and selling short sales, not just any old real estate agent is able to advise you properly.
4. Your lenders customer service department. If you want to get short sale information, please, please do not call customer service at your lender. If you want to talk to anyone at the lender about a short sale, please speak to the “short sale” or “loss…

Out of all the lenders I work with, Provident lands towards the top of my list of favorites.

When this Manchester, CT seller first called me, I had never even heard of Provident and feared for the worst. Smaller lenders can be be very disorganized and difficult to work with, however Provident proved to be the opposite. We did face a few delays though. First the property proved to be a tougher sell than I imagined...the market here in CT seems to be declining at a tremendous pace and sometimes it is simply hard to keep up. Second - my seller committed the cardinal sin of short sales - not providing documentation in a prompt fashion !!!!!.

If there's one thing you can do to help yourself as a CT short seller - it is to get all your documents in…

Short sales - dealing with a request for cash contribution

Not all short sales are completely "free". While closing costs are generally covered by the lender, sometimes and lately more often, the lender will in fact ask the seller to contribute to the short sale in the form of cash or a promissory note in order to approve the short sale.

These requests are more common for certain sellers over others. If this sounds like you, you may want to prepare for the fact that you will be asked to chip in some cash to get your sale to happen.

You may in fact agree to just pay the cash or sign up for the note to move things along, but there are a few ways that are often successfull in minimizing or eliminating the request altogether:

1. Just say no - but…

Short sales can be good deals and are usually in better condition than the bank owned properties out there. However there are some instances in which as a buyer, you should not be considering short sales:

1. You have a home to sell before you can buy a new home and closings need to be timed accordingly. Hubbard clauses and short sales just dont go together. Simultaneously buying and selling require some timing challenges that simply dont work with short sales.
2. You have a strict timeframe. Your lease is ending and you need a new home by a specific date...you are relocating and need to be in your new home by then...your kids need to start school in the new town by Sep. 1st...etc. If you have a set timeframe and no flexibility, dont look at short…

It's not every day I get to escape the big boys of banking - Bank of America, Wells Fargo, GMAC, etc -  and have the pleasure of dealing with our own little local Connecticut banks.

Dime Savings Bank proved to be an absolute delight to work with. I have my suspicions that this was actually one of their first short sales, since they didn't appear to really have a set process in place and actually seemed to value my expertise in the matter. There is no short sale department and my main contact was the head of collections - Matt. I even met Matt at the property as he wanted to get a real feel for the condition of the property so he could take his observations back to the committee personally. Matt was a dream to work with and for the first time, I…

A CT Bank of America Cooperative Short Sale Success

I originally heard of BofA’s Cooperative Short Sale Program over a year ago. Promises of quick approvals and cash incentives went in one ear and out the other. It seems Bank of America has lots of plans that never materialize.

Over the last year I have had dealt with numerous Bank of America short sales, yet not one of their “cooperative short sales” so I assumed it was a fly by night idea that never really got off the ground.

Then I finally ran into one. My East Haddam, CT client had been attempting to short sale for several years unsuccessully when he called me. We put the property on market. As usual we found a buyer and went under contract rather quickly, but then the waiting…

Cleaning up the last agents mess - a Bank of America short sale tale

When I first met my client she had a current listing with another agent. Priced at just what was needed to get out of the loan, the Glastonbury, CT house had sat on the market for 6 months for $80,000+ over market value. The previous agent had refused to do a short sale as she didn't understand them and- TO MY INCREDIBLE SURPRISE - had still taken a $5,000 retainer on the listing despite knowing she was incapable of handling the transaction!!!!

Realizing very quickly that she was facing an inevitable short sale, my new client still had to waste the next 6 months waiting for the current listing to expire. Thankfully there was no foreclosure date set or the consequences could have…

Do I have to be destitute to qualify for a short sale?

The short answer is…NO. You do not have to be destitute in order to short sell your CT home. In fact, as a CT short sale agent, many of my clients are actually well to do, have good credit, good income and can in fact pay their mortgage. They simply need or want out and a short sale is the only realistic option. I consider these sellers “strategic” short sellers. Not all short sellers are scraping by.

What you can expect as a strategic, as opposed to a “necessary” short seller:

• Extreme scrutiny of your financial documentation
• High likelyhood of being asked to kick in to make the short sale happen
• More difficult, delayed short sale

What you need as a strategic short…