Buying an Illinois Short Sale

Tips for buyers:

1. Use an experienced short sale agent - find an agent that has listed and sold many short sales, experience with broker price opinions would be very helpful as well (see item #2). This is important, because often agents inexperienced at short sales (who may be very experienced in other areas of real estate) are not aware of how to get you the best deal or avoid potential issues with Illinois Short Sales. http://shortsalesuperstars.com/group/illinoisshortsales is a great place to look.

Your agent should be very experienced with short sales to get you a good deal.

2. What price would the bank likely take? Sometimes, listing agents list short sales at an artificially low price to attract a buyer quickly. This may be to reduce their marketing time, because the bank is about to foreclose and they are hoping to postpone the sale, or because they want to send up a trial offer, and see what the bank comes back at.
You agent should prepare their own broker price opinion, before you submit an offer. This is where having experience with completing broker price opinions (called bpo's) can help you accurately gauge the price a bank will likely take for more on this see http://shortsalesuperstars.com/group/bpo I would tell my clients, this house is listed at $185,000, the bank may take that, or less, but my broker price opinion shows that $225,000 is likely what they will take. If my clients are okay with $225,000 then we would put in an offer under the listing price, but expect that the bank might counter. If they accept, great, we saved money. If they counter, well we knew what to expect.

You don't want to sit around waiting for an artificially low price.

3. How many liens? Note, I didn't say mortgages. It is possible to have liens for mortgages (1st, 2nd, HELOC), real estate tax liens, association fees, IRS tax liens, mechanic's liens, I have even seen sellers' credit cards attach themselves as liens on the house. When there is more than one lien, there can be a fight between the different parties about how to split up the money, each extra party adds a level of difficulty.

You want to know how many liens, to know how complicated the short sale will be.

4. How experienced is the listing agent? The listing agent (sometimes the sellers' attorney) usually ends up doing the majority of the short sale negotiating. If they are inexperienced, the short sale may not go through or may take a very long time (especially if complicated by a number of liens). Have your agent pull up how many short sales the listing agent HAS CLOSED.

You want the listing agent to be very experienced with short sales, or you may not close.

This little bit of research (which your buyers agent should complete for you) will help you have piece of mind that you will get that home. If you love the home and get back positive answers to 1-4 you are likely to be making a wise choice that you will be happy with.

Any questions, feel free to give me a call direct at 630 981-7300