When can we stop selling homes as a Short Sale?
Another day today, receiving another call from another distessed Seller. Back in 2008, I actively enlisted myself to help the distressed Seller and continue to do so today. Helping a distressed Seller is very 
rewarding. At the time, it seemed that only a handfull of Realtors were learning all that they could and working hard at saving homeowners from Foreclosure whereas, the majority of Realtors couldn’t stay far enough away from them. Fast forward to today, December 2012, most Realtors now will list a distressed Sellers’ home for sale due to the sheer numbers of likely Short Sale Sellers. Of course, that doesn’t mean that they’ll have a high rate of succes at doing it, as they’ll find out it’s a lot different from selling a non-Short Sale home. Short Sales require perserverance, negotiation skills and empathy.
In my South Florida Real Estate market particularly Coral Springs, the averages are running around 25% of all closed sales. Add that to home sales that have already been foreclosed upon and you have around 40% being distressed home sales; a whopping amount of distressed homeowners. That’s a high on going number and I’m not seeing any monumental changes to those numbers. It’s very disheartening that these numbers still exist.
What do we need to stop the bleeding? How about a striving, growing economy putting out much lower unemployment numbers and higher growth rates? The path to that outcome has surely been debated. I would think that most would agree that we need jobs so these distressed Sellers struggling with no work or less work and income, could gain employment. How are we going to get these new jobs? We’ll need employers large and small to start hiring while stopping layoffs. What encourages these employers to hire? We need certainty in our economy, as we certainly do not have that; when will we?
Why am I still seeing Lenders fighting tooth and nail with approving legitimate Short Sales? Okay, what is a “legitimate” Short Sale? It’s a homeowner with a proven hardship and/or scenario making them unable to afford their mortgage payments. Why not work with these homeowners so they can move on to rebuilding their lives? Case in point, I’m negotiating a Short Sale currently where the Lender is countering the Buyer’s offer by almost 29%! It’s crazy! The fair market value of the home is not 29% higher! I was told any effort to try to change the Investor is futile and to let the Buyer walk and then they’ll offer the Seller a Deed in Lieu. Sure, the Lender would prefer to take a Deed in lieu without having to go through the lengthly and COSTLY Foreclosure process here in South Florida. Of course, you just can’t believe everything the negotiators try to throw at you to see what sticks. This isn’t sticking, I advised them. Okay, so now they indicate the Seller must pay to have an Appraisal completed and they want an up to date Market Analysis from me. However, don’t expect much, they say, as the Investor could counter again thus increasing their net amount required. Oh geeze…when can we stop selling homes as a Short Sale? Until we can, I will be there to Fight for the Distressed Seller!