With lender owned properties selling like hotcakes, short sales are now becoming a much more acceptable way for buyers to find great real estate deals. Banks are also becoming more receptive to entering into short sales because they now value more than ever the ability of getting out of a problem property without ever having to take ownership of it and take on all the problems and pitfalls associated with owning, managing and selling real estate.
Also, there is now much more infrastructure in place to make short sale deals more likely to actually close, between lawyers that facilitate negotiations between the seller and their lender(s) and real estate agents that now have a greater knowledge of how to coordinate short sale transactions.
The biggest new development from a buyer’s perspective is new language that can now be added when making an offer on a short sale that limits the Seller from taking more than 1 offer to the lender at a time for consideration. One of the biggest problems my clients have experienced with short sale transactions is that you go through the trouble of writing a contract and then have to wait 2-4 months for a response and then find out that 6 offers have been submitted to the bank for consideration. Lo and behold, the lender has played “eeny-meeny-miny-moe” with the offers and decided to go with one of the other buyers. That leaves you back at the drawing board having to start all over again. Very frustrating.
Now, with language that is commonly inserted into offers to purchase, the buyer may ask the seller to agree to submit only their offer to the lender for consideration and take other offers only as backups (not sent to the lender). This way, the Buyer is protected and put in first position of being able to negotiate a deal without other offers muddling up the process. For buyer’s willing to provide some up front earnest money to lock up a property, this becomes a viable option to chasing lender owned properties that are being snapped up within days of coming on the market.
I, myself am preparing to take a more active role in the short sale arena beyond just representing buyers in a few transactions. This is looking like the newest way to get my clients into well-priced homes below market value in an already decimated real estate market that is Phoenix, Arizona.
For more information about short sales and my services representing Buyers, please head over to my website: www.CanadiansBuyArizona.com