Comment

Comment by Jim Hale on January 12, 2010 at 10:22am

Please resist the urge to use the term "strategic" short sales. It is a term designed to be derogatory. It is banker Newspeak a la 1984.

Comment by Katerina Gasset on January 12, 2010 at 10:07am

Daniel- I am not the judge over who is more deserving over than another. While one may advocate for a real distress situation with a job move- it is still investors who get economies moving and they have had their hands tied in regards to getting any benefit in return. The person who has a job to go to is most likely getting that job from someone who has owns a company or has made money through investing in product, real estate, or other unless they get a job working for the government, ooops, even in that case, the money is coming from tax money from taxpayers who have jobs because of someone investing somewhere along the line- at the end of the day you need investors to move free markets. The investors we work with that are really investors - lots of them are now going bankrupt and have no choice but to do short sales or else just walk away.
Is it better to leave the keys on the table, have foreclosures in the communities just sitting there or do short sales for even strategic short sellers. To the banks a approving a strategic short sale is purely a business decision.
I don't think that this is what bottle necks the system.
The single most complaint we get from short sale lenders is that the reason it is so slow is because of the large turnover. Do you know why they quit? The number one reason is agents yelling at them. How is that for building realtor image? The second biggest reason is that agents DO NOT send in complete packages, spend too much time asking questions on things they should know or else not do short sales. That is from the lenders perspective. Of course I agree in part because I see the ignorance from agents every day. But I also know there are many better ways the lenders can streamline the process.
Now, to the bigger question, if Nestor and I are making our living negotiating strategic and investor short sales - and your processing of the situation became the rule, only help your client and not ours- what about us? You see, it is not a him or they thing. By choosing one way as right over another you only hurt someone else. That is why this needs to remain a business decision or you will be making choices over who should be the victims. Of course, I will always find another way to make money because I am an entrepreneur spirit and will never stay laying down. But that is not the point of my question or discussion:)

Comment by Steele V. Propp on January 12, 2010 at 8:47am

Katerina,

Thank for your info on how you do things in your market. The team approach is a good one (getting the good team members is the tough part).

Interesting that your market is so many investments gone South. Makes sense based on what we hear about Florida.

We are seeing a little of the same with investors who are upside down and the banks seem to be largely cooperating. You also mentioned people who are doing strategic short sales. How are the banks on these? Are they asking for promissary notes or additional cash in order to release?

Curious as to how the lenders are working with these situations.

Comment by Jim Hale on January 12, 2010 at 7:43am

Gunna -
That's funny, I've never seen the word "caring" applied to any "nationwide" actor in our nati0nal economic drama. I don't know--it might be true.
Anything is possible, I guess.
Do you have a example to share?

Comment by Katerina Gasset on January 12, 2010 at 7:16am

Gunna- only about 1 out of every ten of our short sales is a 'poor desperate' soul needing help. Most of our short sales in our community are investor short sales and strategic short sales. Feeling sorry for people who bought 4 to 5 houses to flip before construction is completed - well, I don't feel sorry for them. Nestor and I had the opportunity to do the same thing, we chose responsibly, to not engage in gambling with the market. When you see financial statements with 2 car payments for Escalades that they are current on totalling $1600 a month which is equal to many people's mortgage payments and they have credit card debt in the 6 figures and they took HELOCs out to go to the Bahamas and Europe- that is a matter of priorities. We don't judge anyone who asks us to do their short sale. That is not my place- so we do our work to help the economy.

Comment by Katerina Gasset on January 12, 2010 at 7:11am

Steele- Most of our properties that are short sales are absentee owners. If the seller passes our intake evaluation then we move on to getting all their documents, again, via email. We take short sale listings most all places in Florida. If the listing is out of our market area we cobroke with an agent in that area who will take the photos, put up their sign, put it in their mls, etc.
For our market, we have runners who put on the lock boxes. Most places here don't allow signs. If the seller does not have photos than Nestor or I will go and take the photos for the mls and for marketing. We carry between 40 to 50+ listings. Many of those I have not been inside of. Our listing manager sees the insides of the properties that are in our market area. We work with a lot of investor short sales that have tenants. We sell those mostly to other investors who can even buy sight unseen and just keep the same tenants. We each have a role to play on our team. We work in the area of our strengths. I am strong in writing and love to write so I am the blogger, the online marketer, I do most of the write ups for our listings, I do the negotiating with the lenders when it gets to the actual negotiating part. Nestor is good at motivating the banks to work on our files and he is a great negotiator also. SO we divide and conquer in that area. He is the CMA guy, the numbers man. He is great at values. The key to doing volume is in having systems and working in your strengths. I do all the intake evaluations of the sellers because I have a way of feeling through the situation and finding the hardships and reasons to be approved for short sale. I also know the questions like the back of my hand. I also gauge the sellers' commitment levels. Since we work with lots of investors who need to short sell their properties, I need to know if they are going to participate with cash to close or promissory notes, etc- if it leads to that point.

Comment by Ryan Diedrich on January 12, 2010 at 6:04am

I started this post on Titanium Solutions and good to see all the feedback. As far as what i was told, I have to pay no referal and there was no contract with either I or the seller. As far as I thought, TS was just a middle man negotiator paid by BOA to help streamline a process of getting these short sales off their books quicker.

Although REOTrans (Equator) is suppose to do this as well i do not think BOA has a good handle on it yet. And when they do, they have to train all the negotiators on it which lets face it, will take forever since the turn over there is so high. How would you like to work 8 hours a day and get yelled at for 7.5 hours of from us agents....so you can not blame the turnover.

I will not pay a referal to TS unless they sent me the lead. This was my listing and marketing money invested from over a year ago. I can not see how they would ask for a loss mit fee of 1% of sales price or a 30% referal charge when it was already your lead. I have no problem paying a 20% - 25% referal if they get me business but 35% with a short sale is just way to much but from how it seems in the other post that is not an issue yet...or even set up.

I hope TS can help make some of these BOA quicker. To be honest, I will take a 3 month short sale with TS...still better than BOA 6 month period.

Comment by Gunna Voigt on January 12, 2010 at 6:03am

Jim, this is a nationwide that believes in doing things right to help those poor people who need help desperately! Of course, THEY ARE LICENSED! Which is more than you can say for many of the "ex Realtors" who didn't pay their renewal!

Comment by Dawn Barrier eXp Realty Vegas on January 12, 2010 at 6:01am

Ditto to Steve's comment....also...there is a point, when you immediately know your duty becomes to the homeowner Not the bank.

Comment by Marcelo Da Silva on January 12, 2010 at 5:59am

Katerina, Steele: Great points! In the end, it is all about your business model.

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