Home Short Sales What They Are, How They Can Help
When you’re looking at an underwater mortgage or are having the kind of financial difficulties that are pretty common in this economy, home short sales are one way out.
In a short sale, your mortgage lender agrees to let you sell your house and agrees to take the amount you get for it-not the full amount of the mortgage.
Short sales help in many ways. For one, during the process of negotiating for and holding the short sale, you can live in your house payment-free. This gives you time to save up for your new life and find yourself a more affordable place to live.
Short sales also help because they can take a long time. Short sales aren’t short!-they take about as much time as any sale does in this lousy real estate market. It can take up to a year or more before you finally have to move out.
In addition, when you have a short sale on your home, you don’t walk away with as big of a black mark on your credit as you do with a foreclosure.
Of course, even if you start out with a short sale, you may only be delaying the time before you end up foreclosing if your house doesn’t sell. You need to be prepared for this-but then, you’re possibly looking at as much as a year before that happens and up to a year or more for the foreclosure. That’s a lot of time to prepare and save!
Now, you can’t just walk into your lenders office and say you want to have a short sale on your house. First, you’re going to need to hire a Realtor to help prove your case for you. You’re going to have to prove financial distress, and you’re going to have to walk in with proof of what your house is actually worth now. You’ll also need to have a proposal, complete with total costs of the sale. Your Realtor will work with you to create these documents.
But even if you qualify, you may have a hard row to hoe with your lender at first. Many lenders are still resisting, even though the sales save them thousands of dollars on foreclosing costs, property maintenance, and sales costs! So be persistent if you have to-someone at your lender may well see reason.
Also, there’s a new federal program that is giving money to both lenders and homeowners to help the process along. This program will also help if you have more than one mortgage on your house. We have more information about the Home Affordable Foreclosures Alternatives program elsewhere on our website-check it out!
So before you get into a panic over your situation, realize that you do have some power here. You can come out of this with your family, your pride, and even some of your finances intact. Just take the lead and start negotiating-home short sales save lenders money, save homeowners heartaches, and save communities from the blight of foreclosed, empty houses!
Don’t worry about finding an educated, certified short sale Realtor to list your home. Just contact us and we’ll be happy to help you locate a Realtor who specializes in these sales in your area.
Article Source: William Bud Gragg Jr
