Short Sales In Palm Beach County Florida and Port St Lucie Florida

What is a short sale?

A short sale is when a homeowner owes more on their mortgage than what their home could sell for in their present market. It just may be the best solution for a homeowner who does not want to have a foreclosure against their credit. Below is a 12 part series with more information to help you through the short sale process.

Short Sales In Palm Beach County Florida- What You Need To Know If You are Buying Or Selling. Part 1

If you live here you most likely have heard about short sales in Palm Beach County Florida.

You may have heard about them from your friends down the street, the news media, your neighbor or even perhaps one of your family members. We will go through important information that you need to know before you buy or sell as a short sale in this series. This is part 1 of the series.

We will be going through some important matters regarding short sales in Palm Beach County Florida that you should understand whether you are buying or selling a short sale. In both instances, you must have patience.

What is a short sale? A short sale is when the homeowner owes more to his/her lender than the market value of the property. For an example: You have a loan on your house for $500,000 but in today's market a buyer will only pay $350,000 based on the last properties that sold in this neighborhood. Well, no buyer will pay $500,000 for this house so the seller will have to ask his lender if they will take less for the note that he owes to them. If the lender says yes, than that is a short sale.

Just as there are many different lenders there are just as many different policies governing the short sale procedures. The lenders all have their own criteria of what short sales they will accept. Just because your house falls in this category does not mean that every house will be approved for a short sale.

The next thing to understand for both sellers and buyers is that a short sale does take time.

We have had some short sales in Palm Beach County that have taken as short as one month to others that have been taking over 3 months to just get to the person at the lender who can make that decision. It is not as simple as just sending some documents in and that is it. There are formulas and procedures that lenders use and as I said above not all lenders use the same ones.

Some lenders outsource their short sales to a company that is proficient in the business of negotiating short sales. In these situations the lender gives the company a bottom line that they will accept, that is basically how much they are willing to lose to do the short sale.

And if you have mortgage insurance on your loan then the mortgage insurance company will also need to approve the short sale. What happens in this situation is that the mortgage insurance company will pay the lender the difference in the loss. Please be aware that many times the mortgage insurance company will want the seller to take back a note for some of the loss and pay some of that loss back to the mortgage insurance company.

The lender who you are sending your house payment to every month may own the note or they may just be a servicer for the lender. If they are the servicer for the loan there is an additional amount of time in the short sale process because there is yet one more entity with whom the short sale will also have to be approved by. This happens a lot in situations where your note has been sold several times in a short period of time or when the lender holding the note is an investor. In this situation, the investor must approve the short sale as well.

If you have a first mortgage and a second mortgage with different lenders that will certainly complicate matters more and also puts a kink into getting the short sale approved since the second note holder will want something to accept the short sale and usually the first note holder offers a mere token to the second note holder however you will need the approval of both lenders in order to close and pass a clean title to a buyer. Sometimes the second note holder will accept the sale if the seller agrees to owe a note to them and pay for some of the loss.

Why would a lender want to do a short sale in Palm Beach county in the first place? Well, sometimes the loss they will accept on a short sale is less of a loss than if they foreclosed on the property. Foreclosing is not a cheap process at all and in Florida it is very time consuming. Most homeowners can keep the lender at bay for months and sometimes even over a year. At times the lender feels it is better for their bottom line to accept a short sale.

Not every homeowner is qualified to do a short sale in Palm Beach County Florida and we will cover the criteria in the next post in this series: Short Sales In Palm Beach County Florida. So stay tuned...

Disclaimer: This post is not intended to be or to provide legal advice. We recommend that you speak to your attorney and your tax accountant regarding specifics and to find out if this is the best option for you in your situation.

Contact Nestor and Katerina Gasset, CIPS, Realtors®, International Properties and Investments, Inc. Licensed Realtors® in Florida at 561-753-0135 to list your property for sale or to purchase a property in Wellington, Royal Palm Beach, Loxahatchee, Lake Worth, Hypoluxo Island, Lantana, West Palm Beach and the rest of Palm Beach County Florida. We are accepting referrals.

Copyright © 2008 By Katerina Gasset, All Rights Reserved. *Short Sales In Palm Beach County Florida- What you need to Know If You Are Buying Or Selling.* Contact Katerina Gasset for Customized Business and Personal Coaching.

Visit our profile to find out more about our services. Call us today at 561.753.0135 or Toll Free 800.444.3316. Contact us by email if you prefer by clicking on email me on the right side of this page under our profile.

To view all the Wellington Florida Luxury Homes For Sale Click here and then click on Multiple Listing Search where the globe is on the right side of the screen that opens up. We know Palm Beach County and will help you get your home Sold if you need to Sell your home and help you buy your Wellington Home or Land ; call us today.

P.S. If you are listing your home as a short sale in Palm Beach County Florida make sure you hire an agent who knows how to do short sales and has the experience to get the job done. We are doing successful short sale packages. Call us at 561-753-0135 to find out more.

Short Sales In Palm Beach County - What You Need To Know - Part 2

Welcome to part 2 of our series, 'Short Sales In Palm Beach County- What You Need To Know. If you have not read Short Sales In Palm Beach County Part 1 then please take a moment to read the first in this series, which is above.

Just because you own a house in Palm Beach County Florida and you have found out that you owe your lender more money than what a buyer is willing to pay for your property does not mean you are going to be able to just sell your house for less than what you owe your lender.

You must pass the Hardship Test. There must be a good and provable reason why you are not able to keep your home any longer.

The Hardship Test: Look at your situation and ask yourself these questions to see if it will pass the hardship test.

Since you bought the house, have you lost your job ?

Did you have a bad accident or illness in which you got injured and could not work?

Do have large new medical bills that you incurred after you purchased the home?

Have you been relocated to another city or state?

Has your interest rate gone up so much that it is now a hardship for you to pay your mortgage?

Now each short sale request is looked at individually because each situation is different. But you must be able to prove that there is a hardship.

What is NOT a hardship?

If you have used your house as your ATM machine and took all your equity out of your house and are now in debt, well, that is a hardship that is going to have a tough time being accepted. I would suggest that you do what you have to do to be able to keep your house.

If you bought your house on the tip of the market and now it is worth less than what you paid for it, that is not a hardship and not a reason at all to sell your house as a short sale in Palm Beach County.

The Asset Test: Do you have assets that you can liquidate to bring to closing when you sell your house short of what you owe your lender?

Do you have money in CD's and Savings Accounts?

Do you have stocks and bonds?

Do you have equity in other properties?

If you have these types of assets your lender is not going to take all the loss and not have you bring some money to the closing table. They will only accept the short sale if you are contributing as well to the loss. However, you may be able to negotiate the loss with your lender.

The Fraud Test: Did you commit fraud when you applied for your loan for this property? This means when you filled out your loan application, did you lie about anything on it like:

Where you worked?

How much money you were making?

What your assets were?

Any of these lies or untruths, whatever you want to call them, will be checked out by the lender. They will match up what you are saying now to what your application said when you applied for the loan. If there is a big difference in the information, than you better have a very good explanation of why the change. A good reason for a drastic change in income would be, losing your job.

We will not list your property as a Short Sale In Palm Beach County if you committed fraud because you will be required to turn in a short sale package which we help you put together and send to the lender along with an offer and then you are exposing the fraud and that can have serious legal implications to you.

The next post in this series of Short Sales In Palm Beach County will cover the documents that you are required to put together in the short sale package. So stay tuned for Part 3.

Copyright © 2008 By Katerina Gasset, All Rights Reserved. *Short Sales In Palm Beach County Florida Part 2 - What You Need To Know. * Contact Katerina Gasset for Customized Business and Personal Coaching.

Short Sales In Palm Beach County- What You Need To Know Part 3

The Short Sales in Palm Beach County is a series of articles for sellers and buyers to better understand what a short sale is and how to proceed with closing with a short sale. In order to understand where we are at in the series please make sure to read part 1 and part 2 above.

So now that you know what a short sale is and you have passed the qualifying tests as set out in the parts above you are now ready to put your short sales package together for your agent and your lender.

short sales in palm beach county

Before you even list your property with your agent you should have your short sale package put together. This way your agent will be able to expedite the short sale process. Once an offer is made on your property your short sale package must accompany that offer. You will be delaying the process and possibly lose the buyer if you are waiting until you get an offer before you gather up all your documents for your short sale package as this can take some time to prepare. There are no exceptions to this process that I have experienced or even heard about.

The very first thing that you need to do is call your lender, to confirm who the lender is and tell them you are putting your house up for sale. Make sure that the lender you are calling is still the note holder or servicer. We just went through sending out a short sale package for one of our sellers only to find out that the note was sold to another lender which this can happen often and because of this, we had to start the process all over again. Therefore, you may be able to save some time by confirming your lender.

The next thing that you will need to do is write out an authorization letter for your agent to discuss your loan standing, details and short sale offers with your lender. This letter has to have the name of the person the loan is under and the loan number, as well as the name and company of your agent. Also, please make sure you date the letter. Most lenders have a period of time in for which the authorization letter is good for and after that time has expired you will need to write another authorization letter.

Here is the list of all the documents you may be required to submit. If you put together a package and then you find out they don't need one of these documents then just take it out of the package. It is better to be prepared and find out you did more than required than to submit an incomplete package. Your agent should be checking the package to make sure there is nothing missing. The lenders receive so many files each day that they can not even look at the incompleted packages.

Your authorization letter as stated above.

A handwritten hardship letter explaining your hardship.This hardship letter needs to explain why you are needing to sell your property as a short sale. Please read my post on qualifying for a short sale approval.

A completed financial statement that your Realtor® has received from your lender. We have found through our experience that each lender has their own financial statement that they provide, which is not difficult to fill out. It is in a form format with fill in the blank areas. There is an asset column and a debt column and they will have a place to write in all your income and all of your expenses. This is where it is important that you told the truth on your loan application.

The last 2 pay stubs for all the signers on the mortgage.

The last 2 years of tax returns for all the signers on the mortgage.

A copy of your listing agreement with your Realtor®; your agent will provide that.

Once you have put all these documents together, you need to give them to your Realtor® so that they can get to work on your short sale package and make all the proper notations that might possibly need to be made. Each document will have to have your loan number written on it as well.

After you get an offer you and your agent will have to put together the rest of the package and that includes:

A fully executed offer of sale and purchase agreement.

The prequalification letter for the new buyer.

A HUD1 settlement statement from the title company with all the fees listed correctly. The lender will need to approve the expenses prior to accepting the buyer's offer.

Your agent should put together a sales package along with the short sale package. They should have your current market value paperwork and evidence showing that the offer is reasonable. We also put newspaper articles in the package showing our current market conditions. Documentation beats conversation. This is one of those times you can take all the bad news and work it in your favor. Nestor makes a very thorough and compelling argument and we have met with good responses to going the extra mile with the lenders. He is also putting together another short sale package as I am writing this post.

Stay tuned for part 4 of our Short Sales In Palm Beach County Series as we discuss what happens after the short sale package and offer is sent in to the lender. If you are interested in buying a short sale property, understanding what happens after the lender receives your offer will be beneficial to you.

The information provided herein is supplied by several sources and is subject to change without notice. Wellington Homes Blog does not guarantee or is any way responsible for its accuracy, and provides said information without warranties of any kind, either express or implied. Entries on Wellington Homes Blog represent the opinions and ideas of the author(s). Wellington Homes Blog does not express the views of International Properties and Investments, Inc or those of the broker.

Contact Nestor Gasset and Katerina Gasset, CIPS, Realtors®, International Properties and Investments, Inc. Licensed Realtors® in Florida at 561-753-0135 to list your property for sale or to purchase a property in Wellington, Royal Palm Beach, Loxahatchee, Lake Worth, Hypoluxo Island, Lantana, West Palm Beach and the rest of Palm Beach County Florida. We are accepting referrals.

Copyright © 2008 By Katerina Gasset, All Rights Reserved. *Short Sales In Palm Beach County Florida- What you need to Know If You Are Buying Or Selling Part 3 * Contact Katerina Gasset for Customized Business and Personal Coaching.

Short Sales In Palm Beach County Florida- Part 4 The Process Begins

This series on Short Sales In Palm Beach County Florida continues as we explore what happens once an offer is made on a short sale listing. This post is of special interest to buyers who are interested in making offers on short sales. You should know what is involved and your agent should also be able to follow and understand the process of making a short sale offer.

Let us assume for this post that the seller knows what a short sale is, their Realtor(R) has experience working in Short sales, the seller has met the qualification test to do a short sale and the seller and their agent have put together all the documents the particular lender requires to do a short sale, except for the offer from a buyer. Short Sales In palm beach County florida

Now we are ready to receive an offer from a buyer. A buyer's agent should know how to help a buyer to understand all that is involved from both the buyer and seller requirements in order to have a transaction that runs as smooth as possible in this given situation.

The first and most important thing to understand about the short sale is that the seller of the property still owns the property, still holds title to the property and still has the say so of what offers will be accepted or not. The seller has mortgaged their property and the lender to whom they pays the mortgage payments to each month is the note holder or in many cases, the note servicer. The bank does NOT own the property. A Lis Pendens may have been filed and foreclosure proceedings may have started but until that property is sold on those courthouse steps the owner of records is still the person that is on the county records.

That being said the owner/seller can accept an offer from a buyer but since the offer falls short of what the seller owes to the lender, there must also be a third party approval to the offer, which is the lender, to whom the seller owes their loan to.

This third party lender will require the property to be sold in "as is" condition and will also have to approve all the closing fees on the side of the seller.

As a buyer you will also need to prepare a good presentation with your offer to this third party lender.
Submit your offer on a FAR/BAR AS IS Offer to Sale and Purchase with the new FAR/BAR Short Sale Addendum.

Your agent should have these documents. If you are obtaining financing for this purchase, you need to have your lender's approval letter. To receive this you need to make sure you have been approved for your loan. This means that you have already submitted a loan application, had your credit checked, provided all the documentation to the lender like your W-2's and tax returns. Please be advised that should your offer be accepted it is highly likely that the short sale lender will require you to close within 3 weeks of them accepting the terms and short pay off amount.

You should choose a mortgage company who is on the ball with short sales and knows how to get your loan through underwriting in a short amount of time.

Your earnest money deposit needs to be ready to place right into the escrow account the moment that the third party lender approves your offer. Make sure to get a signed and dated receipt of your earnest money deposit. Keep in mind that if you are paying by a personal check most title companies will require 10 to 14 days for that check to clear. To help speed this along, you may consider getting a cashier's check to the title company so that there is no hold up at closing for funds that have not cleared yet.

Along with your offer you should submit a nice hand written letter explaining to the third party lender why you want to move into the home and that you are an end user. We had a single mom tell of her plight to get into a home with her children and that her offer was the highest she could go. She is the one who got the house in spite of their being multiple offers on the property.

Your agent should arm your offer with comparative sales in the area and other market appropriate documents to prove the case of your offer.

The next post in this series will be about how to decide what to offer on a short sale, myths and truths about offer prices on short sales.

Copyright © 2008 By Katerina Gasset, All Rights Reserved. *Short Sales In Palm Beach County Florida- Part 4 The Process Begins* Contact Katerina Gasset for Customized Business and Personal Coaching.

Short Sales In Palm Beach County Part 5- Short Sale Myths and Truths About Offers

short sales in Palm Beach County

This post will be about how to decide what to offer on a short sale, myths and truths about offer prices on short sales.

There is quite a vast amount of false information regarding how much you can buy a short sale for. Like those that are watching too much late night TV about buying real estate at 50 cents on the dollar and with no money down.

MYTH- The lenders are so desperate they will accept any low offer that is offered on a short sale.

TRUTH- The lenders would rather work out a workable solution with the homeowner. There is a formula that most lenders use to determine their loss and what the actual net proceeds are that they will accept at a short sale closing.

MYTH- The lenders are just jumping up and down to get your low ball offer!

TRUTH- The lenders follow policy. The policy is that we submit the short sale package from the seller along with the short sale offer and package from the buyer. The lender then orders a BPO. The BPO usually comes back in a week to 10 days. The BPO is NOT an appraisal. It is a Broker's Price Opinion. The lender hires an agent to go out and do this Broker's price opinion for the lender. The lender pays the agent somewhere between $50 to $100 to do a BPO.

Once the BPO is back, they work their formula and then send us a statement telling us what they will need to net. The BPO is what the last similar property sold for. They will usually accept about 5% to 15% below their BPO for an accepted offer.

MYTH- You can offer 30 cents to 50 cents on the dollar of what the listed price is.

TRUTH- The above statement is NOT true. The lender will take a small discount off of the BPO value as they want right below market value.

The list price is not your starting point in the negotiations on a short sale offer. You must pull up the tax rolls and check to see how much the owner owes to the lender. You will look to see if Lis Pendens has been filed. You will also need to take into consideration that if this house is in pre foreclosure there are other bills they most likely have not paid for that will affect the sale of the property.

Those are:

Real Estate Agents' fees

Second notes or home equity lines of credit

Unpaid HOA fees and related attorney's collection fees

Title insurance, doc stamps and other closing costs

Unpaid Property Taxes

All of these things are going to have be paid at the closing. The seller is most likely not going to have all that money to bring to the table. These figures are turned into the lender because the lender will choose which of these closing fees they will approve and how much they will expect these fees to be reduced.

Once you know how much the seller owes on their property you will have some idea as to how to structure your offer.

If this short sale is in Palm Beach County Florida it is very likely that you could get the property for 50 cents on the dollar on what the seller owes their lender, NOT what the list price is. The list price is usually right below market value and this is where the misunderstanding comes in for most offers.

You must look at what is owed to the bank versus what the market value is; the list price. The lender is actually reducing the loan down to the market value which can be a reduction of up to 50% as many markets have dropped that much in the last couple of years.

Sometimes you will get a better deal if you are a buyer making an offer on a property that has equity in it and the seller is motivated to take a lower than market value offer. You must have a lot of patience when making an offer on a short sale. If you need to be in a house by a certain time in the near future trying to buy a short sale if that short sale is at the very beginning of the process and there is no BPO yet on the property, then it most likely would not be in your best interest to pursue that particular offer.

You can ask your agent to look for short sales that already have a BPO back on them and the original offerer is no longer in the picture. When this happens you will know exactly what the lender will accept as their bottom net and then you can decide if you would like to pursue buying that property. In these situations we can close rather quickly, usually within 2 to 3 weeks.

So make your offer based on TRUTH not MYTH.

Copyright © 2008 By Katerina Gasset, All Rights Reserved. *Short Sales In Palm Beach County Florida- Part 5 Shor Sale Myths and Truths About Offers. * Contact Katerina Gasset for Customized Business and Personal Coaching.

Short Sales In Palm Beach County Florida Part 6- After The Offer Comes In.

So now the buyer has made an offer and turned in all his/her supporting documents. The seller and their agent have put together all the required seller documents for the short sales in Palm Beach county package.

The agent will now make sure that every document required is correctly filled out and make sure that the loan number is on every document. The agent will contact the third party lender and get the instructions to get the package to them, usually more often than not, the lenders want the package faxed to them. If they want you to express mail the package make sure you have a duplicate package prepared to keep for yourself. On one of our short sales; we expressed mailed the package and it was signed for but it ended up in the lender's black hole. Then they lost our two faxes of a package that contained over 100 pages and they even said they never received our email when we emailed the package. So make sure you have a back up.

Super Tip: I would recommend buying one of those stamp kits at Office Depot so you can place the loan number on the stamp and use that to stamp all the pages of the short sale package instead of hand writing the loan number on 80 to 100 pages of documents. Doing this will save you some time.

Once the Short Sale package is delivered to the third party lender we will call the lender to make sure that they have received the package. This one action is an act of patience! Some lenders are easy to get through and some lenders are a nightmare. Sometimes Nestor has been on hold for over an hour just to reach the right person to simply find out if the package is there! Please do not work in short sales if you have a hot temper or are impatient as your blood pressure will surely rise while on the phone with certain lenders.

Super Tip: Call the lender early in the morning, get on that phone before all the other callers start calling. Be the first in line!

Once we get someone on the phone Nestor confirms that they have received the package and that they have our authorization letter from the seller so we can talk to the lender. The first thing Nestor does is to confirm that this lender actually holds the note for this property. We had one short sale where the lender our seller was sending his payments to had sold the note to another lender and that lender in turn sold it to someone else. Since the first day of giving this lender notice that we were doing a short sale that note ended up being sold twice in a period of just a couple of weeks. The lenders were playing hot potato with his loan!

Super Tip: Make sure that you call ahead before you even get an offer to the lender to confirm that they are still in fact the lender. Notes are being sold every day so you need to stay on top of this.

There are note holders that service loans that they do not own. In these situations the servicer takes care of all the short sale paperwork and acts in behalf of the note holder. For instance, we have a file now where the servicer is GMAC and the note holder is Deutch Bank. GMAC is like the negotiator for Deautch Bank.

There are also companies that just do Short Sale processing and negotiations that lenders will contract out their short sales to. We have had the best results from these types of companies. Obviously this company is also getting paid upon the completion of each short sale so they are quick to respond to us. Nestor usually can get right through directly to the negotiator on the file.

Then there are the lenders who are trying to do it all themselves. These lenders own the note, service the note and handle all aspects of the Short Sale. These tend to be the hardest to get through to, as they are totally swamped with files and they do not have experience in doing Short Sales. A salaried employee who knows little to nothing about the real estate business is what you end up with. Most of the time, by the time these lenders do something with your short sale package the buyer is long gone!

Super Tip: Don't sweat losing the first buyer. Once the counter is made from the lender you will know exactly what they will accept for the property and the next buyer that comes along will be able to close quickly. There is more on this in the next post, Part 7.

Disclaimer: This post is not intended to be or to provide legal advice. We recommend that you speak to your attorney and your tax accountant regarding specifics and to find out if this is the best option for you in your situation.

The information provided herein is supplied by several sources and is subject to change without notice. Wellington Homes Blog does not guarantee or is any way responsible for its accuracy, and provides said information without warranties of any kind, either express or implied. Entries on Wellington Homes Blog represent the opinions and ideas of the author(s). Wellington Homes Blog does not express the views of International Properties and Investments, Inc or those of the broker.

Contact Nestor Gasset and Katerina Gasset, CIPS, Realtors®, International Properties and Investments, Inc. Licensed Realtors® in Florida at 561-753-0135 to list your property for sale or to purchase a property in Wellington, Royal Palm Beach, Loxahatchee, Lake Worth, Hypoluxo Island, Lantana, West Palm Beach and the rest of Palm Beach County Florida. We are accepting referrals.

Copyright © 2008 By Katerina Gasset, All Rights Reserved. *Short Sales In Palm Beach County Florida- Part 6- After The Offer * Contact Katerina Gasset for Customized Business and Personal Coaching.

Visit our profile to find out more about our services. Call us today at 561.753.0135 or Toll Free 800.444.3316. Contact us by email if you prefer by clicking on email me on the right side of this page under our profile.

To view all the Wellington Florida Luxury Homes For Sale Click here. We know Palm Beach County and will help you get your home Sold if you need to Sell your home and help you buy your Wellington Home or Land ; call us today.

P.S. If you are listing your home as a short sale in Palm Beach County Florida make sure you hire an agent who knows how to do short sales and has the experience to get the job done. We are doing successful short sale packages. Call us at 561-753-0135 to find out more.

Short Sales In Palm Beach County- Part 7- Inside The Process

Depending on how the lender is handling their short sales, this is the point where you need an agent who is working with the seller to really know what they are doing and how to negotiate with the seller's lender.

For illustration purposes we will call the person we are dealing with at the lender the 'negotiator'. Different lenders have different titles for this person but to make things simple we will stay with the term 'negotiator'.

The negotiator takes the file and checks to see if all the documents are in the package and if the file is complete. Each negotiator may have upwards of 140 or more files coming in per day and they must process these files quickly as possible. Any incomplete file is not going to be attended to in a timely fashion so make sure it is all correct to begin with before you send it in.

Once the negotiator has checked the file and has determined it to be complete he or she will order a BPO.

What is a BPO?

A BPO is a Broker's Price Opinion. The lender will hire a real estate agent to do a pricing report and come back to the lender with the information as to what that individual believes the fair market value of the property is right now. The BPO must consider the last solds in the neighborhood that the property is in and if they can not find any comparables in that neighborhood then they may go outside of the neighborhood to find a property of like kind. Usually this process does not take long. We often see then done about a week after the negotiator has received the package. Then that agent will send their BPO back to the lender.

The lender then calls us to tell us what the note holder will accept as a net figure. This net is based upon a formula that is used to estimate the losses the lender can incur. What we have seen for Short Sales in Palm Beach county Florida is about a 10% to a 15% discount off of the BPO. The BPO defines what the current market value of the property is.

We then take the net amount that the lender has agreed to accept and work with the present offers we have to see if any of them will meet these numbers. If all of the offers are too low then we will call each of the buyers' agents and tell them the offer is xxx amount of dollars away from happening. The agents can then tell their buyers what the price will need to be for them to get this particular house. If the buyers want to meet the price then we have a deal and we start all the closing procedures and loan procedures for the buyer's side.

If the price is too far away to work then we put on all our marketing and Multiple Listing Service the price that is going to get this property.

Once the BPO is in; generally it is easier and faster to sell the house. When agents call us for showing instructions we can tell them about the BPO and that their buyer is now in a position to have a quick closing. We just closed on two short sales last week and both of them had their BPO's done in December and we closed in February. That was not that long of a time to get to closing. In fact one of them was ready to close in January but our seller had some bankruptcy issues that needed to be addressed before we could close.

The problem that we see causes the most problems with the successful closing of the short sale is the lack of experience from the real estate agents that are involved. Nestor is on that phone with the lenders every 2 to 3 days checking on our files. Someone who knows how to deal with people must be on that phone with the negotiator, checking on the progress of the file and the state of where in the process this file is at, to ensure things are going smoothly.

The HUD1 Settlement statement is the other item that needs to be perfectly correct when it gets sent to the lender with the offer and short sale package. Make sure every single fee is on the HUD or else you won't have a closing and you as the agent will have to pay the difference in the errors on the HUD. Once the HUD has been approved by the third party lender it is highly unlikely to approve any changes so pay attention to detail for a smooth closing!

_________________________________

Disclaimer:The information provided herein is supplied by several sources and is subject to change without notice. Wellington Homes Blog does not guarantee or is any way responsible for its accuracy, and provides said information without warranties of any kind, either express or implied. Entries on Wellington Homes Blog represent the opinions and ideas of the author(s). Wellington Homes Blog does not express the views of International Properties and Investments, Inc or those of the broker.

P.S. If you are listing your home as a short sale in Palm Beach County Florida make sure you hire an agent who knows how to do short sales and has the experience to get the job done. We are doing successful short sale packages. Call us at 561-753-0135 to find out more about Palm Beach County Short Sales.

Short Sales- Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Short Sales But Were Afraid To Ask- Part 8

Palm Beach County Short Sales- Short Sales- Information For Sellers and Buyers.

At least 3 times a week, we get calls from Sellers who no longer can make the payments on their home and are trying to find out what a short sale is and how it works. Most of the calls we have received this last week are from sellers who have already spoken to their attorneys and their attorneys are recommending that they sell their home using the short sale process.

We listed 2 short sales this past week, where the seller found us on our Active Rain blog and called us after reading our posts about how to do a short sale. We had one owner call us to list his house but it would be better for him if he does whatever he can to keep his house, so we did not list his house. Instead we are sending him to resources that may be able to help him keep his home.

Pricing your property competitively enough to encourage offers from buyers is one of the most important things to know when you list your property as a short sale. And if you are an agent you must not only have the foresight to know what a BPO will come in at but also to have some understanding on what a buyer's appraiser is going to be looking at for comps. Pricing a home too high will create headaches for a seller and in the end, possibly making them lose their home to foreclosure. At the same time, pricing too low will get offers that have no chance of being accepted since the lender is not going to approve sales much lower than their BPO.

Please read the following story of a seller that wanted to price her home correctly but her agents priced her home too high.:

short sales: Beware Of Damaged Goods! *The Human Consequences Of Taking Overpriced Listings*

If you read the story from the link above, you would know why it is so important, and I can not stress this enough, that you choose an agent who knows how to do Palm Beach County Short Sales and has experience working with Short Sales. Ask your agent if they have closed on any short sales in your area. Selling your home as a short saletakes commitment, perserverance, patience and expertise in negotiations and follow through of actions. Do not leave your Short Sale to chance.

Time is of the essence in doing your short sale. Call Nestor Gasset and Katerina Gasset today at 561-753-0135 to find out about selling your home as a Short Sale.

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Copyright © 2008 By Katerina Gasset, All Rights Reserved. *Palm Beach County Short Sales- Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Short Sales But Were Afraid To Ask.* Contact Katerina Gasset for Customized Business and Personal Coaching.

Disclaimer:The information provided herein is supplied by several sources and is subject to change without notice. WellingtonHomes Blog does not guarantee or is any way responsible for its accuracy, and provides said information without warranties of any kind, either express or implied. Entries on Wellington Homes Blog represent the opinions and ideas of the author(s). Wellington Homes Blog does not express the views of International Properties and Investments, Inc or those of the broker.

Successful Short Sale Closings And We Got Paid! Short Sale Series Part 9

We closed on 2 short sales successfully and both were our listings.

They were both difficult transactions but in the end we got our checks, the other agents got their checks and 2 new homeowners got awesome deals on these 2 homes. Patience is the principle quality you must have to follow a short sale through. Nestor is very good at following up with the lenders and wielding all the influence possible in order to get the sellers approved with short sales below market value. Knowing what to say and how to say it, is very important.

Why is below market value important right now? Because our market is not quite finished going down, we are just about there but not quite.

One of the units was a condo, we originally had it listed for $249,777 and kept reducing the price as per the instructions of the seller's note holder. As soon as we reduced it to $150,000 we became just about the hottest listing in town. We had 4 offers on this unit within days. One of the offers was way too low at $130,000. But one single mom put in an offer of $150,000. This was good enough to get the ball rolling. Nestor made sure the BPO agent would have to meet him at the property. The problem with this unit was that in this development there has not been a sale since October of last year. That comp is not workable in a down turned market. The agent received it and was able to pull comps from outside of this development. The BPO came in at $167,000. The other buyers all went away when the counter offer came back. All of them except for the single mom with her FHA loan. We actually prayed that she would get this condo because there is nothing else like it in Wellington for that price. So the highest she could go was $155,000. We sent in her counter offer to the lender even though it was still so far off. The negotiator talked to the note holder again and he finally said go for it. Although, he only approved our commission at 5%.

Her FHA appraisal came in at $208,000. We were so happy that our seller was able to get a clean fully satisfied, no 1099, no default judgment, no promissory note! And we are happy that this unit went to a mom who is raising her child in this new home that she can call her own. That is what makes this business worth what we go through!

How did we get this listing? Of course, through our Expired Listing Program.

Our second closing on a short sale was for our wonderful and loyal seller who is a great referral source. She had her house on the market for almost a year, way too high. We sent her a letter notifying her that a lis pendens had been filed against her 2 houses.

She moved here from Africa, from Uganda, escaping some of the most vile and cruel may ham and ethnic cleansing murders you can not even imagine. She told me stories of how women's breasts are cut off so they can not nurse their babies, so that their babies will die of starvation in their mothers arms with mothers helplessly crying and being able to do nothing to save themselves or their babies. She came here to live in a country that would never tolerate this, to live the American Dream.

Her son and my son have become friends, they are the same age and play together. She now lives in a rental right down the street from us so we have become friends as well. Well, she rented this house out to a lady who made her living out of not paying rent. Our seller was totally scammed. The woman would come crying about how her mother had cancer and the next time, how she was in a car accident. Well, the seller has a kind heart and at first believed her sorrows but they were all lies. When she realized the scam; she hired an attorney and it took another year to get the woman evicted. This scam artist would not let us show the house either. Needless to say, our seller could not make the payments and pay the attorney's fees and this caused her to go into default.

We listed her house right below market value but we received no offers. This was when our market was just not moving. There were months where there were just not any buyers for any of the homes in this community. The worst part about this community is that the builder is still in there building houses. He is giving away mega upgrades, low interest teasers and selling the same model for less than what any resales were on the market for. We reduced the price to $374,000 and then in December buyers started buying again. We had 5 offers on this house. The BPO was done right on this house too. The offer came back that the note holder had to net $311,000 on this house. Most of our offers were in the high 200ks, which was not going to work. But then we had an agent call us who had a buyer who just lost a deal on a short sale offer and needed to close quickly. He made an offer of $330,000, we were able to make the numbers work and he got the house.

Our seller was not 1099'd, she has no deficiency judgment and no promissory notes to take care of. The buyers' appraisal came in at $380,000! He got a great house at a great price, we got our check and so did the buyer's agent, which made everyone happy!

Both of these houses were closed at the end of February and both of them took less than 6 weeks to close from the point of the first offer to the BPO, to the acceptance, to the closing.

So have faith, it can be done.

If you are a seller please read through our Short Sale Series and make sure you choose an agent who had closed short sales and knows how to close them.

If you are a buyer read our Short Sale Series and make sure you have an agent working with you that understands how to present you in the best light to the third party lender.

If you are an agent please read and understand our Short Sale Series and partner with an agent who had closed a short sale successfully on your first short sale. It is worth splitting your fee to get it done right and to have the hands on experience before you jump into Short Sales.

Please be aware that no matter how great our success is with getting short sales closed; there is NO guarantee that your short sale will be successful. Please keep in mind that each short sale is different, each seller has different circumstances and different lenders. If you have Country wide as your lender- well- we will pray for you! More on that in the next short sale post...

Contact Nestor Gasset and Katerina Gasset, CIPS, Realtors®, International Properties and Investments, Inc. Licensed Realtors® in Florida at 561-753-0135 to list your property for sale or to purchase a property in Wellington, Royal Palm Beach, Loxahatchee, Lake Worth, Hypoluxo Island, Lantana, West Palm Beach and the rest of Palm Beach County Florida. We are accepting referrals.

Short Sales In Palm Beach County - Strategies For Communication- You Must Hold The Key. - Part 10

Short sales in Palm Beach County Florida take a winning and well thought out strategy in the lines of communication. Icertainly recommend that if you are a seller that you find an agent who is very good with communication and knows how to work with others well. If you are an agent than please make sure you know what you are skillful in as far as communication styles.

Great people skils is another quality you definitely need to be successful in. The reason your agent needs people skills is that he/she must be able to break through all the walls and obstacles that the lender has in their path to a successful closing of your short sale. Nestor is very good with this type skill, as he knows how to flatter the people on the other end of the phone. He can dazzle them with his fun compliments and charm, making many become putty in his hands. He is able to get through.

Do not treat the customer service people ( no matter how ignorant they may sound) with disrespect, having the attitude that you are better than they are. You also should never act like a weak beggar and you must communicate from a position of strength and knowledge. In the business of short sales in Palm Beach county; the true power is in your people skills and your knowledge of the market. But coming from a position of strength does not mean being overbearing, rude or disrespectful. Keep a smile on your face as you are conversing.

In our series of posts on short sales in Palm Beach County Florida This is not the business for those with hot tempers and I as I have stressed throughout this series, you must be patient.. It will do you no good to yell and lose your temper while talking with the short sale lenders' negotiators on the phone. Your lines of communications must be kept open no matter how frustrated and upset you may get. Your file will just get put to the bottom of a very deep pile and might just end up in a lender's deep black hole.

In order to be successful you must get to the chief, the negotiator, somehow. The most assured way to do this is by talking your way into that negotiator's line of communication. This is done through making great fun small talk with the receptionists and customer service representatives. The best way to do this is by understanding their perspective and where they come from. They are just like worker bees. All they are there for is to collect their check at the end of the week, nothing more, nothing less. They are the lowest paid on the totem pole of the company and the lowest skilled. So you need to think about where in life they are coming from and meet them at their level.

There is no sweeter sound in any language than for a person to hear their own name. Learn the names of the people who are answering the phones, the assistants' names and the negotiators' names and then use them in your conversations with them often. Saying a person's name, grabs their attention. You can learn a lot more about this fascinating subject in the classic, How To Win Friends And Influence People, by Dale Carnegie.

When you get through to the negotiator make sure you have your file in front of you. They will get impatient with your being unprepared so make sure you have all your notes ready, the list of questions to ask the negotiator and the list of things you need to let them know about. Although don't ask questions that would lead the negotiator to believe you have no experience in doing short sales. Make sure you know how the process works before you talk to the negotiator. Always have your authorization letter from the seller with you, their loan number and their last 4 digits of their social security numbers. This information will be asked of you every time you call them and many times when they call you.

Copyright © 2008 By Katerina Gasset, All Rights Reserved. *Short Sales In Palm Beach County-Strategies For Communication-You Must Hold The Key* Contact Katerina Gasset for Customized Business and Personal Coaching.

Short Sales and Foreclosures In Palm Beach County Florida- Part 11*What The Homeowner Needs To Pay!

Short Sales in Palm Beach County and in Saint Lucie County Florida are rising at a steady pace. You can not look for a house for sale without noticing that there are short sale listings everywhere, due to the fact no community is really immune to this. At first I thought that the waterfront was immune but then we discovered an 18 million dollar home in Highland Beach that is on the market as a short sale.

Most homeowners do not know that a short sale is an option. If you have been served with foreclosure papers, a complaint that must be answered within 20 days of you being served; please call us right away so that we can put you in touch with our attorney who you can talk to about your defense. At this point time is of the essence. You need foreclosure defense at this point and you need to know what your options are.

Each short sale listing we have received from our blog has been because the homeowner that has defaulted on their mortgage payments was told by their attorney or their financial adviser to find a Real Estate agent who knows how to do short sales and list their home as a short sale. So the homeowner get on their computers and Google; Short sale real estate agents in Anytown Florida and then they call us to help them.

But there are many people out there that qualify to do a short sale but have no idea what a short sale even is much less what to do to accomplish a short sale on their property.

Hence, we started our series on Short Sales in order to educate both the homeowners and the agents about all that you need to know about a short sale. This is the 11th article in this series on short sales.

A short sale is when you owe more money to your lender than you can sell your house for. The lender agrees to accept less than what you owe them so you can avoid foreclosure.

What do you as the homeowner have to pay in order to do a short sale and what will not come out of your pocket?

First of all, there is no cost to you to list your home as a short sale. If you need foreclosure defense that is a different and separate from the short sale and there is a fee that you will be charged by an attorney or a foreclosure defense company but it is very small compared to losing your home to foreclosure.

When you list your home for sale as a short sale you are signing a listing agreement with us saying that there is a X percent commission to be paid to us at closing. That commission is not coming out of your pocket and your not having to bring it to closing. The commission will be deducted from the proceeds that your lender is getting from the buyer. So relax about that.

Your lender will pay for most all the closing costs. Each lender has different policies and rules regarding certain fees. If you are behind in your taxes, usually the lender will be paying those at closing from the proceeds of the sale.

One thing is for sure. Your lender will not allow you to have one penny from this sale. Any moneys that you get must be given to your lender, which makes absolute sense. So if you are approached by people telling you that they are going to give you money on selling your house as a short sale, that is called mortgage fraud and we suggest that you do not take any deals like that.

Your short sale lender is going to require that you pay all of your utilities. Some utilities can and will place a lien on your property if you get past due. Especially your water bill as that is a bill that in most towns here in Palm Beach County and Saint Lucie County will place a lien against your property for. You can not sell a property with clear title to a buyer with outstanding liens on the property. So don't get so far behind in your utilities and HOA fees that you can not catch up before closing. Keep a close eye on that..

Also, some lenders will pay the HOA fees and some will only pay a portion of them and some won't pay any of them. Try your best to keep your HOA fees current because they are also a lien item. We can usually negotiate that bill down, depending on when you bought your house. A new law was passed that now HOA's can come after you even after a foreclosure for money you own them but that law was just passed so it may or may not apply to your circumstances. Ignoring your HOA fee bill is not going to make it less or make it go away. The late fees and collection fees really add up fast, so make sure you watch that closely.

Call us today to get your house listed as a short sale as soon as possible. It takes time to market and prepare short sales so every day counts.

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Call us today at 561.753.0135 or Toll Free 800.444.3316. Contact us by email if you prefer by clicking on email me on the right side of this page under our profile.

To view all the Wellington Florida Luxury Homes For Sale Click here and then click on Search For Homes We know Palm Beach County and will help you get your home Sold if you need to Sell your home and help you buy your Wellington Home or Land ; call us today.

P.S. If you are listing your home as a short sale in Palm Beach County Florida and Port St Lucie Florida make sure you hire an agent who knows how to do short sales and has the experience to get the job done. We are doing successful short sale packages. Call us at 561-753-0135 to find out more about Palm Beach County Short Sales and Port St Lucie Short Sales.

Short Sales- Qualifying The Homeowner For A Short Sale- Part 12- One of the key steps to making sure your short sale listing goes to closing.

Whenever a homeowner calls us and tells us they want to do a short sale we ask first understand and what do they know about selling their home as a short sale.

Most homeowners do not really know what a short sale is. Most of the time they have spoken with either their attorney or their financial advisor about their financial situation and were told the best option in their situation is to sell their home as a short sale and avoid foreclosure, so the homeowner looks for an agent to list their home without any clue of what a short sale actually is.

After we explain what a short sale is and disclose that there is no guarantee their lender will approve a short sale we do an 'intake interview'. This is just like a buyer applying for a mortage except backwards. When a buyer is qualiying to purchase a home they want to be in a good financial situation, have good credit and have money to put down on the purchase. The homeowner in a short sale wants to show a hardship, show they cannot afford their home any longer and for a good reason, for the best chance of their short sale being approved.

We do this qualification interview on the phone with the homeowner. We do this before we do a CMA, listing agreement or anything else because we want to evaluate the chances of this short sale going through, the chances of this homeowner getting a deficiency judgment and the chances of the lender asking the seller to contribute to the short sale. We are in the business of helping people however we also need to keep in mind that we are running a business and there are many homeowners who just will not get approved for a short sale in the realm of what they are hoping the outcome to be. So we need to know what we are up against before going any further. We also will not accept short sales that have more than 2 mortgages on the property.

Another reason for doing the interview is to find out if we get a sense that they were not telling the truth when they obtained their loan in the first place. If they tell us that they were not honest on their loan application than a foreclosure is their only choice because we will not take that listing and neither should any agent take a listing like that. Their lender is going to want to see their financial history and if they lied on their application and things have not really changed as far as a hardship goes than you are putting yourself in a precarious position, which is not worth it.

During the qualification interview we disclose to the homeowner all the possible outcomes of a short sale so they know going in this what can possibly happen and it helps to get their committment to the process. This is a very emotional and frustrating time for the homeowners and being a good listener is a must for them. Yesterday a husband and a wife in their 60's were crying on the phone as we went through this process. It is a tough time and we seem to get the real hardships.

The process includes a list of financial questions like how much money are they making now, what has changed financially in their lives since they got the house, how much are all their expenses and we go down a list of expenses, how much do they have in savings or retirement accounts, the list can go on and on.

The reason we need to know about retirement accounts is because the lender can not require you to cash out your retirement account to pay the deficit but they can turn down the short sale or ask you for a small note and things like that, however, that really depends on how much money there is in the retirement account.

We have been doing short sales for a long time and know what will work and what will not work. The short sale can still be approved with no hardship but the homeowner is going to have to contibute to the sale. If they know this going in to the listing than we may entertain accepting this type of listing. What we don't want our homeowners not committed to the process since we don't take any upfront processing fees and the time and money is coming from out of our pocket. We certainly don't want homeowners who are going to change their minds after we work on their file for 3 months!

Make sure your short sales listings are qualified through their hardships or through their committment to contribute to the deal. Then make sure they will remain committed through out the process.

Call us today at 561.753.0135 or Toll Free 800.444.3316. Contact us by email if you prefer by clicking on email me on the right side of this page under our profile.

Short Sales In Palm Beach County Florida and Port St Lucie Florida