If your home is either in foreclosure or will be soon, you can save yourself by immediately doing a short sale.  If you know someone who is in this situation, you will do them a favor by emailing them a link to this article.  This is the answer to a foreclosure that very few know about, and few have the tools I’m about to share with you.  (Read more about Foreclosures.)

What is a Short Sale?

Most people understand what a foreclosure is.  If payments are in default on the mortgage, the bank will foreclose.  But many people do not know what a short sale is.  A short sale is the sale of a home for less than the current balance of the mortgage.  Banks are agreeing to accept less than the balance of the mortgage balance when a home is sold at current fair market value (FMV) all around the country.

Short Sale Process

The short sale process has been chaotic at best, and a nightmare at worst.  Homeowners who want to sell their homes don’t know how to do a short sale, so they price their homes so they will net zero, but for many homes that is still over priced, which means the homes simply don’t sell and ultimately go into foreclosure.

Short Sale Listing

You might say, “Well, Realtors know how to do a short sale, so I’ll list my home with a Realtor.”  Nationwide very few Realtors know how to do a short sale.  The problem has been that there has not been a standard for the forms and information required by a bank, nor has there been a bank standard for the requirements to approve a short sale.

The result is that attempts to do a short sale have been frustrated by chaotic procedures around the country, inconsistencies in the process, differing standards among banks, loss mitigation departments without clear guidelines, and Realtors who have all but given up trying to get short sales through.

The Short Sale Solution

If you have a home you need to sell, and you expect to net zero anyway, and if it does not get sold fast you will end up in foreclosure, you ought to get serious about doing a short sale.  I recommend two things.

1.  Find a Realtor who understands how to market a home in this Internet marketing age, and who understands how to do a short sale; and

2.  Use the most powerful short sale engine in the U.S.  What is this short sale engine?  It is an entire online short sale software system that will help you organize and manage the entire short sale process from beginning to end.  It includes all the forms and letters, and allows each participant to log in and play their part.  That means your Realtor, your bank (and their loss mitigation department), the buyer, and an attorney (if you or your buyer have one) can all login and facilitation an efficient and quick short sale.

My associate is getting 85% of her short sales approved, which is unheard of across the country, and some of these transactions are getting approved within a matter of two weeks.  This is the single most powerful software to get a short sale approved.

You can use this short sale engine online now no matter where you live in the United States.  The database connects to banks around the country.  Go to Nationwide Short Sale Engine.  If you live in the Sequim or Port Angeles area, I recommend you hire me as your Realtor and we will use this short sale engine to get your home listed and sold quickly and get the short sale approved with your bank quickly.  You can go to SequimShortSales.com or PortAngelesShortSales.com.

There are potential tax and credit score consequences to both foreclosures and short sales.  Foreclosures are often done as non-judicial foreclosures, but banks are also doing judicial foreclosures to obtain a personal judgment, and short sales have potential taxes on the amount of the mortgage forgiven, although legislation may eliminate that issue.  For tax and other financial advice, I recommend you consult your tax account or see an attorney for legal advice.

Time is of the essence if your home is upside down or is approaching a foreclosure.  A short sale may be the best answer to get your home sold quickly.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Sequim Short Sales: Port Angeles Short Sales
• 3 Proven Steps to Buying a Short Sale Home
• New Short Sale Guidelines
• Short Sale Success Depends on Where You Live
• Sequim Spec Homes for Sale: Short Sales Disasters

Finally, a short sale system that really works and helps sellers and buyers get transactions through in the least amount of time with all documentation required by the banks.  Chuck Marunde is pleased to announce the first online short sale engine for the State of Washington and the entire Northwest.  Chuck has been working with a group of short sale experts from Florida for about three years, and the final product is now complete and ready for buyers and sellers to use.  This is the first and only powerful online short sale engine in the entire Northwest and on the Olympic Peninsula and in Sequim and Port Angeles.  What does it do?

Short Sale Online System

This short sale engine solves a major nightmare for buyers and sellers.

For too long the process of getting a short sale through has been a nightmare, and many clients and their Realtors will say that is an understatement.  When a home’s fair market value is less than the balance of the mortgage on the home, the house is upside down, and if a buyer and seller can reach mutual acceptance on a fair price in the current market, it may mean the bank must accept less than the mortgage balance.  This is what we call a short sale.  But trying to get banks on the east coast (or anywhere) to cooperate on a short sale in Sequim or Port Angeles has been nearly impossible.  I’ve had several short sales go south simply because we could not get the bank to work with us on a short sale, and much of that had to do with documentation and the timely processing of all documentation by the responsible parties.

The state of the short sale market has been chaos–literally.

Banks have been ill-equipped to handle the massive volume of foreclosures and short sales, and their loss-mitigation departments were not staffed or trained to handle the defaults and short sale process.  In fact, there were no systems set up for handling large volumes of short sales, nor were there even standards upon which to make decisions regarding short sales.

While banks have been unequipped to handle short sales necessary to get houses sold in this recession, real estate agents have been thrown into the lion’s den in terms of trying to figure it out how to handle a short sale, with agents all over the country doing whatever they heard might work, sending in wrong documentation, insufficient backup documentation, and in many cases not knowing to whom to send the documents and requests to.

Finally, someone has created a short sales system that is being used effectively to complete short sale paperwork, assemble a professional package to submit to banks, and a system of organization and management of the entire process from beginning to end so that all parties involved (buyers, sellers, banks, their Realtors, and their attorneys) can log in to the online account to facilitate the transaction.  There has been nothing like this available until now, and Chuck Marunde is pleased to announce this launch of the areas first online Short Sales Engine.  The system includes:

1. Paperless Short Sale System
2. Online Short Sale Document Collection
3. Online Access For Parties Involved in a Short Sale
   
4. Valuation and BPO Reports
5. HUD-1 Calculation Tools and Forms
6. Internal and External Notes System
7. Fax and Email Packages Through The System
8. Professionaly Built Short Sale Package

If you are a buyer of a home that must be a short sale, contact Chuck Marunde.  As your buyer’s agent, he can use this Short Sales Engine to push your offer through to acceptance faster than anyone without this incredible system.

If you are a seller that must list and sell your home as a short sale, this is the system you need to accomplish what has been confusing to so many across the country.  Although previously Chuck has not been accepting listings that necessitated a short sale, Chuck is now accepting short sale listings because this system is so efficient.  This short sale system gives Chuck a huge advantage in getting a short sale through, and that advantage plays out in favor of his clients who list their property with him.  It doesn’t hurt that Chuck was a real estate attorney for 20 years and understands the foreclosure and short sale process from his own professional experience.

“I’m very pleased to finally have this short sale system up and running after three years of behind-the-scenes work with the most knowledgeable short sale experts in the country.  While I am rolling this system out for everyone in the State of Washington, I am pleased to make this announcement first to Sequim and Port Angeles residents right here,” says Chuck with obvious enthusiasm.  “I’m grateful to be able to bring something so needed and so beneficial to buyers and sellers on the Olympic Peninsula.  This online short sale tool is going to help a lot of people get their homes sold so much faster in cooperation with their banks.”

“Today I talked with one of my associates who is a Realtor and used this system to help one of her clients.  After completing the online documentation from the checklist, she hit the button that assembled the entire short sale package for the bank, creating a cover sheet, a table of contents, and all of the documentation and letters required by her client’s bank.  She said it was about an 80 page package.  She sent the package that was created within the Short Sale Engine while online directly to the designated point of contact at the loss mitigation department on a Friday.  That same afternoon, that bank employee called my associate and said, ‘I got your package and it is so professional.  Everything we need is there and labeled nicely.  Since you’ve given me everything I need to make a decision, let’s get this done right away.  I’d like to get this file off my desk.”

This short sale system works.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Foreclosure or Short Sale?
• 3 Proven Steps to Buying a Short Sale Home
• New Short Sale Guidelines
• Short Sale Success Depends on Where You Live
• Sequim Spec Homes for Sale: Short Sales Disasters

If you are buying a home in Sequim or Port Angeles involving a short sale, here are three proven steps to making that purchase a huge success.  If you’re not familiar with the term “short sale,” it involves buying a home at a price that is less than the current mortgage balance.  Most people are familiar with the concept of a car  being upside down when the car isn’t worth what is owed on it.  Until the recent real estate recession, we didn’t have homes that were upside down.  Around the country many homes have had to sell as short sales.  Of course, this requires the bank’s agreement to cut their losses and take a payoff on the loan that is less than what is owed.

Short sales are closing every day in cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix, but not in Sequim and Port Angeles.  The procedure and the steps to accomplish a successful short sale here are different than the template for the short sale hot spots around the country.  As a real estate attorney who handled many foreclosures and short sales, and now who represents buyers in short sales as a real estate agent, I’ve articulated three steps to a successful short sale in Sequim or Port Angeles.  If you do complete these three steps, you still have no guarantee, but if you miss one of these steps, you are guaranteed to fail or end up with a nightmare scenario.

3 Steps to Buying a Short Sale Home

1.  Know the process and save yourself from disillusionment.  Know that negotiating a short sale in Sequim or Port Angeles will be a slow and tedious process, and the bank can leave you waiting, literally not responding for months.   The process can drive a normally patient person to say, “Forget it, I’m not going to sit around waiting, not knowing when or if anyone will decide to respond to my offer.”  [Again, this is not the same in Las Vegas where there are currently 700,000 loan modifications in process.]

2.  Find a Professional Short Sale Buyer’s Agent.  Buying a home that must be a short sale is not something you want to do without an experienced professional who has been there, done that many times.  There are many nuances and many traps for the unwary.  I picked up many clients as a real estate attorney who thought they knew all they needed to know, but subsequently found themselves in deep trouble.  When I represent a client as their Short Sale Buyer’s Agent or their Foreclosure Buyer’s Agent, I cost my clients absolutely nothing.  Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?  But it is true.  The seller pays all my fees as well as his agent’s fees.  What I give my clients is a lifetime of real estate experience, including many short sale and foreclosure transactions.

3.  Do Your Due Diligence.  You’ve got a lot of due diligence to do when buying a home in a new area, and a short sale or a foreclosure will require some additional due diligence because of unique problems associated with distress sales.  Also in this process, the bank will submit certain documents to you, in addition to the standard real estate forms used in Washington, and these forms will require legal interpretations as you will be asked to sign them.  Some entities representing banks in this process have put together forms that were not drafted by an attorney and give them complete access to all of your personal financial accounts and identity.  That is not only inappropriate, but dangerous, and yet many who don’t know or aren’t getting good advise are signing such documents. [I know this because I have reviewed these documents and advised my clients.]

Your ideal home may be in the MLS and listed with an agent, and it may or may not necessitate a short sale, but if it does, know how to go through the entire process and come out a winner.

I hope this information is helpful.  If you do find a home that is for sale, and it is either a foreclosure, or was, or it must be a short sale, you can hire me as your Short Sale Buyer’s Agent or Foreclosure Buyer’s Agent.  Contact me by email, chuckmarunde@gmail.com, or call me at 360-775-5424.  I would love to represent you.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Foreclosure or Short Sale?
• Sequim Short Sales: Port Angeles Short Sales
• Looking at Sequim Foreclosures
• Is Your Sequim Home in Foreclosure or Close To It?
• Real Estate Markets Dramatically Different

A number of Sequim and Port Angeles homes have been for sale subject to short sale approval.  This means that the selling price agreed upon by the buyer and seller will require the bank holding the mortgage to agree to accept less than the balance of the mortgage.  The practical problem here and in many parts of the U.S. is that we can’t get these short sales approved through the banks if our lives depended on it.  I’ve written about how impossible it is to get bank cooperation, even when the offer is very reasonable.

The Feds have compiled new guidelines for banks to implement a short sale, which take effect in April of 2010.  This may  be good, although I’ve seen the guidelines, and even though I was a lawyer, I dreaded the idea of having to read this massive document full of legalese and bureaucratic phraseology.  I’m not going to read it.  If you want to, here it is:  Short Sale Guidelines.

I will cut to the chase for those of you who want the 411 without further ado.

Basically, these guidelines, which are voluntary, will allegedly provide a template of procedures for banks to use around the country, so we can get these short sales done in a reasonable period of time with some sort of standard.

Two points of interest to me.  First, the guidelines are to provide standardized forms, procedures, and timelines to allow the borrower to receive pre-approved short sales terms prior to the property listing.  Wow!  That would be a miracle if it actually happens.

Second, the borrowers are to be fully released from future liability for the debt.  Wow!  That would be miracle two if that happens.  According to the guidelines, these are supposed to happen, at least for the banks that agree to voluntarily participate.   Let’s hope they all do.

You can read more about short sales, the process and the challenges at Sequim Short Sales.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Foreclosure or Short Sale?
• Sequim Short Sales: Port Angeles Short Sales
• 3 Proven Steps to Buying a Short Sale Home
• Short Sale Success Depends on Where You Live
• Sequim Spec Homes for Sale: Short Sales Disasters

The success or failure of your short sale depends on where you live.  It should not be, but it is.  How banks are handling short sales varies dramatically based on where you show up on Google maps.  I’ll explain.

A short sale is the sale of a home at a price less than the current mortgage balance.  While a buyer and seller may agree on a price that is less than what is owed on the mortgage, obviously in order for such a transaction to close, the bank has to agree to accept less than what they are owed.  Without their agreement, they will not issue a reconveyance of the deed of trust extinguishing the promissory note on the debt.

Bank short sale departments have been totally overwhelmed by the volume of short sale requests (let’s not even get into the foreclosure chaos that has also overwhelmed the banks).  They did not gear up for this, which means they do not have systems in place to manage short sale requests.  A bank has a lot of due diligence they are obligated to do in the process.

They must process an offer from a Realtor and coordinate with the seller, their client.  This means having an organization that can manage files, computer database records, and compile  all loan and value information from various sources (which exceeds the capacity of many bank databases at this time).  They must put together a checklist of information and documents they need to process a short sale request, and as one short sale clerk told me,

“Sir, we have multiple checklists, depending on who is the supervisor at the time, and I’m sorry but it’s chaos in our short sale department.  I’m not supposed to talk like this.  Our investors are demanding that we require certain items, no matter how impossible it may sound, and we have no flexibility.  We have requirements, which vary as I said, and we apply those nationally.  I’m so sorry but our investors are requiring this, and I have no authority to help you, no matter how reasonable your request may be in your market, if you cannot meet all of our [multiple] checklist requirements.  And I cannot promise you that the offer will be considered within any particular time period.  We usually take 30 to 90 days to process a request, but it could take any amount of time, but we have files we haven’t been able to get to in months.”

The result of such chaos and lack of good organizational systems is that bank short sale departments have implemented systems on a regional basis.  So Las Vegas and Phoenix short sales (and foreclosures) are handled much differently than a small out-of-the-way market like mine in Sequim and Port Angeles on the Olympic Peninsula in Western Washington.  Short sales are being approved daily in the Vegas market, but not here.  It is like pulling teeth to get a bank to cooperate on a short sale here.  I take that back, because it is much harder than pulling teeth.

Do the bank short sale departments specifically and intentionally create different systems around the country?  I seriously doubt it.  I think the more likely explanation is that they reach the practical limitations of manpower, money, and other organizational resources.  Their pipeline is getting clogged up in numerous places, so where do they focus their resources first?  In the larger markets that have crashed with thousands of homes in foreclosure and thousands needing to be sold prior to foreclosure as  short sales.

The reason this is important to understand is that rules and principles for handling short sales that work in one part of the country may not work so well in another part of the country.  While many are out making millions selling their short sale secrets and systems, for the Realtors among us who get involved with short sales, it is important to know that what worked in Miami might not work in Tacoma or Sequim.  The process, the paperwork, and the people will all be different.  As with every real estate transaction, every short sale must be handled on its own merits and each client given the highest customer service to work through the unique issues in that transaction.  Be prepared to spend between three (3) and five (5) times as much sweat and labor on a short sale as you would on a regular sale.

Possibly Related Posts:

• Foreclosure or Short Sale?
• Sequim Short Sales: Port Angeles Short Sales
• 3 Proven Steps to Buying a Short Sale Home
• New Short Sale Guidelines
• Sequim Spec Homes for Sale: Short Sales Disasters