Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jennie Blackburn on September 30, 2010 at 11:23am

I have tried this with more than one law firm, but the attorneys either charged the seller (an up front fee ($2-3k) or a monthly retainer) OR stole the client altogether.

Permalink Reply by Todd J Sullivan J.D. on September 30, 2010 at 11:38am

I'm sorry to hear that. We charge the client $750 as a flat fee and charge the lender on the HUD 1 $3,000 or 2%/whatever is larger. Or try to! As a Realtor and as my clients are Realtors, my referral basis is too important to allow anyone to play games. Still, it's a tough business.....

Permalink Reply by Susan Neal on September 30, 2010 at 12:20pm

As an attorney, be careful about filing pretend BKs simply to get a trustee's sale postponed. The BK courts frown on being used as a trick, so only file Chapter 7 if it is your intention and your client's to go through with the process and not just file the initial petition and then dump it when you have your postponement. Your license to practice law and your reputation are too valuable to put it in jeopardy for any client.

Also, BofA is wise to such tricks, and won't consider that you are negotiating in good faith if you don't go through with the filing through discharge of the unsecured debt (or a plan and settlement if you are filing Ch13). I have found that most of the time the BofA negotiators can help you a lot and give you referrals to others who can do what they can't if you need urgent help - but they need to know you are offering a solution or compromise rather than roadblocks.

Just my opinion as a fellow attorney/Realtor

Permalink Reply by AMY GERRISH on September 30, 2010 at 12:37pm

I've had one experience with an attorney. They were hard to get updates from, hard to tell if they actually worked the file. Eventually it went to auction after the buyer walked.

Permalink Reply by Todd J Sullivan J.D. on September 30, 2010 at 2:07pm

I couldn't agree more. In the end, it's our reputation and ethics that will carry the day - not cheap tricks.

Susan Neal said:

As an attorney, be careful about filing pretend BKs simply to get a trustee's sale postponed. The BK courts frown on being used as a trick, so only file Chapter 7 if it is your intention and your client's to go through with the process and not just file the initial petition and then dump it when you have your postponement. Your license to practice law and your reputation are too valuable to put it in jeopardy for any client.

Also, BofA is wise to such tricks, and won't consider that you are negotiating in good faith if you don't go through with the filing through discharge of the unsecured debt (or a plan and settlement if you are filing Ch13). I have found that most of the time the BofA negotiators can help you a lot and give you referrals to others who can do what they can't if you need urgent help - but they need to know you are offering a solution or compromise rather than roadblocks.

Just my opinion as a fellow attorney/Realtor

Permalink Reply by Jeff Payne on October 1, 2010 at 2:09am

Since you asked :) I have not had good experiences with attorneys working short sales. Communication was very poor, hard to get updates too. We have only been in that position on the buyers side as I would never put my seller into someone elses hands as they hired me to do the job. Our experience on the buyers side was awful, we put verbage in the contract that our offer would be the ONLY offer submitted to the lender and guess what, the attorney submitted 2 offers to the bank because " The bank required that all offers be submitted to them" that was her excuse and I argued with her that the lender is not party to the contract and can not dictate how many offers get sent to them, the contract was between the buyer and the seller. It fell on deaf ears.
On a side note, I have gotten to know ALOT of bank negotiators who I talk to alot on the "side" for advice and just for laughs sometimes. I can tell you that most of them, even some higher up managers, tell me that they tend to put the files that have attorneys involved toward the bottom of the pile because of the way that some (SOME) treat them. Bank of America actually tells agents that an attorney is not needed to work a short sale, only needed to review docs in the end and I tend to agree.

Permalink Reply by joe beauchamp on October 2, 2010 at 8:27pm

I've read several people's complaints here about using an attorney. It makes sense to me - a lawyer can make $$ or make a few cents by properly spending hours on the phone and researching for a small return. This is what I do all day - I don't see how/why a realtor would do it - just not efficient unless the realtor loves that kind of interaction.

I think lawyers use their legal credibility to hook people in but blow off the work necessary to often succeed and do it right - just not profitable like having a client in the office at $200/hr. Of course, that does nothing to make people think that lawyers are honest, etc. because they simply do shotty work in a short sale - it takes too much to be paid too little for them.

Postponing sheriff sales varies upon circumstances and is getting a lot harder these days - investors are tired of the files sitting there and the banks aren't helping.

We've discussed doing short sales for a few "short sale" attorney's, found that they are not good partners for a couple of reasons. So, from the "other side of the table", we avoid the "we do short sale" lawyers, too. It's hard enough to deal with the bank, don't need twice as much hassle for a good bit less compensation..

Sorry, not exactly what you want to hear.

I focus on short sales with the banks - I don't mess with buying or selling houses. If more realtors knew what I know about the efforts, they'd be cramming their sales into my fax and email. (and, no, that's OK, I stay busy enough, thank you..) You can read plenty of first time stories about how never again, etc. For good reason. It takes that kind of dedication and honing of tools to succeed in many cases. These realtors should be doing what they like best rather than getting $.03/hr back after missing sales opportunities by spending time arguing with banks - and not as effectively as someone who spends the whole day doing this. Attorneys seem to naturally drop the hard work with little payback for the easy stuff with a lot of payback - hence so many stay so far away from short sales, naturally - not going to get any $100/hr doing short sales...

Sorry that it isn't what you wanted to hear..

Permalink Reply by Todd J Sullivan J.D. on October 3, 2010 at 12:23pm

Not at all. I appreciate everyone's honesty. My history prior to managing our firm's short sale department was ownership of a development and two construction companies. With over 1,000 homes closed, I know how hard we work to make a transaction successful. Many attorneys may find quicker financial returns turning a client into a bankruptcy case or other fee based solutions but fail to realize that a volume of work creates better financial returns and to do that, you better provide value and results for the Realtor community is small, even in Phoenix/Scottsdale, Az.
The reason I became involved in the short sale process was the settlement agreements that lenders were providing to some of our clients used ingenious language to release the lien but kept the underlying debt. We are starting to see the first wave of this type of litigation pending in California and Nevada. Everyone in the transactional flow to this type of settlement agreement faces potential litigation and EO insurance will not be covering it. By being part of the transaction and providing the legal opinion letter as to the validity of the Release Agreement which encapsulates the legal liability on our malpractice insurance, we are providing value to our clients and agents.
Our fees are very simple. We charge $750 as a flat fee to our client. We charge the lender $3,000 or 2% of the sales price, whichever is higher. The real estate agent has the benefits of not handling the short sale and being protected by our legal opinion letter while not paying a dime. Some deals we get paid by the lender and some deals we don't.
So, I appreciate all comments and hope to learn from those comments in a constructive manner and to provide better services.
Thanks! tjs

joe beauchamp said:

I've read several people's complaints here about using an attorney. It makes sense to me - a lawyer can make $$ or make a few cents by properly spending hours on the phone and researching for a small return. This is what I do all day - I don't see how/why a realtor would do it - just not efficient unless the realtor loves that kind of interaction.

I think lawyers use their legal credibility to hook people in but blow off the work necessary to often succeed and do it right - just not profitable like having a client in the office at $200/hr. Of course, that does nothing to make people think that lawyers are honest, etc. because they simply do shotty work in a short sale - it takes too much to be paid too little for them.

Postponing sheriff sales varies upon circumstances and is getting a lot harder these days - investors are tired of the files sitting there and the banks aren't helping.

We've discussed doing short sales for a few "short sale" attorney's, found that they are not good partners for a couple of reasons. So, from the "other side of the table", we avoid the "we do short sale" lawyers, too. It's hard enough to deal with the bank, don't need twice as much hassle for a good bit less compensation..

Sorry, not exactly what you want to hear.

I focus on short sales with the banks - I don't mess with buying or selling houses. If more realtors knew what I know about the efforts, they'd be cramming their sales into my fax and email. (and, no, that's OK, I stay busy enough, thank you..) You can read plenty of first time stories about how never again, etc. For good reason. It takes that kind of dedication and honing of tools to succeed in many cases. These realtors should be doing what they like best rather than getting $.03/hr back after missing sales opportunities by spending time arguing with banks - and not as effectively as someone who spends the whole day doing this. Attorneys seem to naturally drop the hard work with little payback for the easy stuff with a lot of payback - hence so many stay so far away from short sales, naturally - not going to get any $100/hr doing short sales...

Sorry that it isn't what you wanted to hear..

Permalink Reply by joe beauchamp on October 3, 2010 at 4:57pm

Send me an email if you have an interest in us backroom processing for you - I'll connect you to the broker. I'll assume that you are essentially running a company independent, pretty much, of the attorneys so are doing the same thing as us, in essence. In that that case, you won't be interested - 'cause you wouldn't need a staff..

Since this forum doesn't let you email w/o being "a friend", here is a disposable email addr - never tried this before: [email protected] - so send a message if you think we have some synergy - this goes away after a month and has a low limit of how many messages to receive. But I like the ease of setting it up... hmm..


Todd J Sullivan J.D. said:

Not at all. I appreciate everyone's honesty. My history prior to managing our firm's short sale department was ownership of a development and two construction companies. With over 1,000 homes closed, I know how hard we work to make a transaction successful. Many attorneys may find quicker financial returns turning a client into a bankruptcy case or other fee based solutions but fail to realize that a volume of work creates better financial returns and to do that, you better provide value and results for the Realtor community is small, even in Phoenix/Scottsdale, Az.
The reason I became involved in the short sale process was the settlement agreements that lenders were providing to some of our clients used ingenious language to release the lien but kept the underlying debt. We are starting to see the first wave of this type of litigation pending in California and Nevada. Everyone in the transactional flow to this type of settlement agreement faces potential litigation and EO insurance will not be covering it. By being part of the transaction and providing the legal opinion letter as to the validity of the Release Agreement which encapsulates the legal liability on our malpractice insurance, we are providing value to our clients and agents.
Our fees are very simple. We charge $750 as a flat fee to our client. We charge the lender $3,000 or 2% of the sales price, whichever is higher. The real estate agent has the benefits of not handling the short sale and being protected by our legal opinion letter while not paying a dime. Some deals we get paid by the lender and some deals we don't.
So, I appreciate all comments and hope to learn from those comments in a constructive manner and to provide better services.
Thanks! tjs

joe beauchamp said:

I've read several people's complaints here about using an attorney. It makes sense to me - a lawyer can make $$ or make a few cents by properly spending hours on the phone and researching for a small return. This is what I do all day - I don't see how/why a realtor would do it - just not efficient unless the realtor loves that kind of interaction.

I think lawyers use their legal credibility to hook people in but blow off the work necessary to often succeed and do it right - just not profitable like having a client in the office at $200/hr. Of course, that does nothing to make people think that lawyers are honest, etc. because they simply do shotty work in a short sale - it takes too much to be paid too little for them.

Postponing sheriff sales varies upon circumstances and is getting a lot harder these days - investors are tired of the files sitting there and the banks aren't helping.

We've discussed doing short sales for a few "short sale" attorney's, found that they are not good partners for a couple of reasons. So, from the "other side of the table", we avoid the "we do short sale" lawyers, too. It's hard enough to deal with the bank, don't need twice as much hassle for a good bit less compensation..

Sorry, not exactly what you want to hear.

I focus on short sales with the banks - I don't mess with buying or selling houses. If more realtors knew what I know about the efforts, they'd be cramming their sales into my fax and email. (and, no, that's OK, I stay busy enough, thank you..) You can read plenty of first time stories about how never again, etc. For good reason. It takes that kind of dedication and honing of tools to succeed in many cases. These realtors should be doing what they like best rather than getting $.03/hr back after missing sales opportunities by spending time arguing with banks - and not as effectively as someone who spends the whole day doing this. Attorneys seem to naturally drop the hard work with little payback for the easy stuff with a lot of payback - hence so many stay so far away from short sales, naturally - not going to get any $100/hr doing short sales...

Sorry that it isn't what you wanted to hear..

Permalink Reply by Jon Zolsky on October 5, 2010 at 10:31am

Worked with Richard Zaretsky from West Palm Beach on several transactions, exceptional work.
Work with a local law firm, and here they are doing a good work, but it is the legal assistant, that does everything, and attorney is not really involved, and I am not sure the attorney really knows Short Sales

Permalink Reply by Donna Paul on October 6, 2010 at 7:07am

At presently, I have worked with one on all my short sale. It jsut doesn't work out well for me. In the end one if the bank cut their fees they look to me for give them additional money. They have also stole my seller.. so for now I wont be using them for my short sales.