You don’t have to wander far on Google or Yahoo to find someone claiming to be able to do short sales quicker than greased lightning. But is there any truth behind those claims? Some, maybe, but there’s also a marketing aspect involved. It’s all in how you tell the tail.
For instance, I recently closed a short sale with Bank of America and depending on how I spin it, I can make completely sensationalize it or I can give you all the details and it paints a much different picture.
What do I mean?
Let’s take the above mentioned short sale and I’ll apply the same marketing spin a lot of these “short sale internet gurus do.” Here we go: “Another short sale successfully negotiated in 22 days! Buyer and seller couldn’t be happier with outcome. Give us a call and we’ll show you how we close our short sales in less than one-third the time of other real estate agents!” Okay, please forgive the cheesy sales pitch, but I hope you get the point. It sounds as if this is the rule not the exception when it’s not.
I did in fact get it done in 22 days from contract to close. What I left out is we had a buyer’s agent and lender who were really on top of things and a buyer who had everything ready to go at the drop of a hat. That made what some would call impossible, possible, and saved my sellers from foreclosure in the final hour.
What you don’t hear about is all the heavy lifting that was done before up to that point. This required getting all the major players involved, including, Fannie Mae, the asset manager at Bank of America, and a representative from the PMI (private mortgage company) Radian, and my sellers so we could work through what seemed to be an imminent foreclosure; and three fallen contracts.
Sure, I’ve successfully completed a lot of short sales for my Boise, Idaho clients and there’s nothing more rewarding than seeing the burden lifted at the closing table when it’s all over. Bottom line, if it sounds too good to be true, I can almost assure you it is. Approach your selection of a short sale agent with caution. Words like “guaranteed success” paired with short sales are not what you’re after. You want an agent who understands short sales and knows what to do with everything goes sideways.
