Short Sale Low Ball Offers

There is no question that short sales are like the wild West. Almost every single sale is different. Each lender and even the investors that hold the loan may have different procedures on how they want things done.
There are some folks that believe that because a home is a short sale it is an automatic invitation to make an unrealistic low ball offer. Even some Realtors who have not been educated on the dynamics of a short sale believe they are just like a bank owned property.

Part of the problem could be late night television where you see so called Real Estate guru’s telling you how to buy and sell Real Estate to become an instant millionaire. Fat chance!

The kind of garbage spewed on these late night shows could not be the further thing from the truth. While Short sales and REO’s are both considered distressed properties they are nothing alike. If you are short selling your Wisconsin home this becomes a very important point.  There is a strong likelihood that you will may receive an offer that should not be accepted.

The problem with a lot of short sale transactions is that Realtors are jumping in and representing sellers with no knowledge of the process. If the Realtor you have hired does not know how to guide you properly how can you expect to have any success?

If you are a Wisconsin home owner who is short selling a home what you really need to understand is that the lender is going to send a representative out to your home after it has gone under contract to do an appraisal or broker price opinion. The lender is doing this to find out what the fair market value is for the property. If the offer that you have accepted is not within the ball park of the actual value of the property your short sale is going to be REJECTED!

The worst part of this is that you probably will already have been waiting for months to find out if the short sale was going to be approved. If the buyer does not increase their offer to the banks counter proposal, the deal will be dead and you will have wasted an awful lot of precious time. Maybe time that you don’t have if the lender decides to start foreclosure proceedings.

This is where your Real Estate agent should have counseled you properly.  
In a short sale your home should be priced aggressively in order to get
an offer as quickly as possible but not so much that it will be turned
down by the lender.

On a weekly basis I am seeing agents improperly handle short sales by either submitting low ball offers signed by the seller to the bank or collecting multiple unsigned offers and just submitting them all like some kind of free for all. This is NOT the way to handle a short sale!

An offer should be collected from someone who has a strong desire for the property and is willing to wait the time it takes for short sale approval. Generally speaking most short sales take three to six months to get approved. The buyer you work with should be educated on this fact.

The contract should be executed by both buyer and seller. I would also suggest some kind of clause that locks the buyer in for some amount of time to wait for short sale approval. On all my short sale contracts the buyer is required to wait for a minimum of 90 days or they would forfeit their escrow deposit which typically is 5% of the homes purchase price.

If you are going to short sell your Wisconsin home make sure you pick a Realtor with experience in getting these transactions completed! Accepting low ball short sale offers is just one of many mistakes you will want to avoid!

If you are needing to complete a  short sale of your home or condo in I would love to interview for the chance to represent your best interests.

Article compliments of Bill Gassett