Does It Make Sense To Do a Short Sale On My Home and What Is a Short Sale Anyway?

A Short Sale is simply "selling your home for less than is owed".  If you have a home and you owe more than the home could sell for right now, you could be eligible for a short sale.  It sounds real simple but it is not simple at all.  If a short sale is not handled correctly, you can be in a heap of trouble.  If the Realtor handling the sale does not have experience with short sales, you can be find yourself with a foreclosure and not even know what hit you.  We have seen where on one hand a lender has "approved"  a short sale while the attorney handling the case for the foreclosure, has sent the file to the courthouse to sell it at auction and the house is gone.  Foreclosure on your record now and good luck trying to buy again for the next 7 or more years.  It is a financial disaster.

A short sale can be a more positive option to foreclosure and it has successfully been accomplished over and over.  It just needs to be handled responsibly to have a chance of success.  How?  Having knowledge of the process and then cooperating with all the steps involved will give you a good chance of success.

You should never pay someone to handle a short sale for you.  The Realtor and the negotiation company if one is used, will be paid by your lender at the closing of the property.  Some negotiation companies will charge a buyer a fee at closing but you should never have to pay them from your pocket.  Sure there are companies out there trying to charge you but that should be a red flag to you of a possible rip off.  You have enough issues to be dealing with just the realization that you are losing your home in the first place is due to a financial hardship.  Giving away more of your hardearned money is not going to help you.

Understand that you will have to provide lot's of information to your Realtor.  This will be used to help you "qualify" for the short sale from your lender.  You really do have to qualify.  The process is much like when you purchased the home and had to qualify for the loan.  You will need to provide at least the following:

• 2 years tax returns
• 2 months bank statements
• Last two paystubs
• A hardship letter
• Last mortgage statement
• Authorization to contact lender on your behalf
• Financial Statement

We need to show the lender that you had a "hardship", that something changed from when you first purchased the property to now.  Just saying the the home is worth less than you paid for it in itself is not enough to make a case for a short sale.  We need to prove to them that something happened since you purchased it ie: death, divorce, loss of job, change of income, sickness, that led to your current position of not being able to keep up with the payments. 

We at AAA Realty LLC use an attorney owned Title Company, Winged Foot Title, to negotiate our short sales.  Not that we are not capable of handling them but instead it is due to their expertise and daily routine of handling them that we choose to have Winged Foot Title.  They are a local firm and it's what they do all day long.  They are great at it and they get it done!  We want to focus on getting your property sold, marketing it and showing it to as many people as it takes to sell it and so we do our job and they do theirs.  It's a great relationship built on trust.

So what about after the short sale?  Will you have repurcusions.  This is a difficult question to answer.  The best way to answer it is, there could be.  However if your alternative is a foreclosure, your repurcusions if any should be dramatically less than with a foreclosure.  Each case is different and a consultation with a good attorney would be advised. 

For more information on your situation, contact us for a free consultation.  You can call us toll free at 1-888-243-1720 or check us out on the web at http://www.aaarealtyllc.com/

Cheers for now,
Tammy Rodriguez
Broker/Owner AAA Realty LLC