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Elizabeth Weintraub
Closed a West Sacramento Short Sale With 2 Loans
One of the common questions I hear from buyer’s agents when calling about a short sale is they want to know how many loans are secured to the property. I don’t know why they ask this information because a) they don’t know what to do with the answer, and b) it is also online, if the agent would just click on the APN link in the MLS listing. I suspect they ask that question because they read it somewhere or heard in a short sale class that they should ask that question. They also might be misinformed about what happens in a short sale with 2 loans. The think it’s troublesome, for some reason.
The problem with handing out that information is some agents will mistakenly advise their buyers not to write an offer on a short sale with 2 loans. They do this because they don’t understand how short sales work, and have heard that junior loans can be a problem. Sometimes junior loans are a problem but certainly not all of the time.
I just closed a West Sacramento short sale with 2 loans. Like most short sales these days, it takes about 90 days to get approval and another 30 days to close. The first lender was Nationstar. I’ve also heard agents say they would not do a short sale with Nationstar. See, that’s the problem with blanket assumptions. They are not true. In fact, I have never had a problem with Nationstar and this Sacramento short sale agent has close hundreds of short sales. Maybe I’ve been lucky, and maybe my day will come, but the proof is in the pudding, as my mother used to say. I don’t know what that means, btw. What exactly is in the pudding?
In any case, this West Sacramento short sale also had a second loan with Webster Bank. No problem, there, either. We opened escrow on February 14th and received a counter offer on March 20th. Met the terms of the counter and received short sale approval on May 20th. Closed less than 30 days later.
So, please don’t avoid a short sale with Nationstar or even a short sale with two loans. Now, a hard-money second loan, well, that’s another story for another time. That success depends on several factors; also NOT impossible.
Cindy Amrine Case is No Test of the Homeowner Bill of Rights
An article that’s been making the rounds online — some with permission and some postings that were clearly just swiped from the Sacramento Bee — concerns a supposed violation of the Homeowner Bill of Rights law regarding dual tracking. Now, not being your average Joe citizen, this Sacramento real estate agent has read the Homeowner Bill of Rights Law in its entirety. And not being a lawyer, my opinion of this law is not to be considered a legal opinion; instead, it’s just a logical interpretation that any rational person of normal intelligence would most likely draw.
The Sacramento Bee article is about a woman and her family in Citrus Heights who are being evicted because their home on Twin Park Drive was sold on the courthouse steps to a private investment group. The owner, Cindy Amrine (Sherr) hired a lawyer to file a lawsuit against Bank of America, claiming that the bank had no right to dual tracking because of the Homeowner Bill of Rights law.
I’m not saying that lawyers take big wads of cash to file lawsuits and get paid whether or not they win the case, because everybody knows that is a fact. In fact, in this instance, I might even go so far as to say the lawyer knows she won’t win but is filing the lawsuit in a sole attempt to get a settlement for her client. It’s true, sometimes banks will pay money to settle a lawsuit, even if the bank is not guilty. It’s the way our legal system works. One doesn’t have to be guilty to pay off a plaintiff. One can simply decide it’s less expensive to bribe the plaintiff to drop the lawsuit than it is to defend it.
What I find interesting about this case is that people are incorrectly assessing this case as a “test” of the Homeowner Bill of Rights law. That law says a bank is permitted to practice dual tracking during a short sale. It’s right there in black and white. The law also says dual tracking must stop after a short sale approval letter is received, but in this case, there was no short sale approval letter, according to the story in the Bee.
I researched the property history online. The home went on the market in early March. Toward the end of April, it went to Trustee’s Sale and the pending short sale canceled. The Notice of Default had been filed the summer of 2012. I can see where the short sale agent did not expect the home to be sold out from under the seller. But we all know — those of who work in short sales — that the foreclosure department of Bank of America has nothing to do with the short sale department. The departments don’t engage with each other.
For the uninitiated though, I offer this bit of trivia for you. The Homeowner Bill of Rights law stops dual tracking during a short sale beginning January 1, 2018. Read it and weep. I predict this lawsuit by Cindy Amrine will absolutely not change how short sales are handled in California, you can count on it, on all 10 fingers. It does bring awareness that dual tracking is wrong.
What Do You Know About a Kendama?
The warnings in the box should have been a clue. First, it was English translated from Japanese, which can be humorous at times. Second, the warnings made it sound like the manufacturer has been sued a lot or maybe it’s just the way risk management is handled on all toys today. There were the usual cautions such as:
- don’t lick it or put it into your mouth
- don’t hit somebody with it
- don’t try to strangle somebody with it
- put on shoes and use in a safe place that doesn’t “hit the person and the thing.”
Because the Kendama may cause unexpected injury or threats to life! Yes, I received a Kendama. Not one, but two Kendamas. They arrived in the mail, and I found the package addressed to me on my front steps. But there was no note or clue as to who sent it.
My birthday is coming up a week from Friday, so I figured it must be an early birthday present. Since I have almost no friends, the list of who could have sent it is pretty darn short. I began emailing people, asking: What do you know about a Kendama?
In the meanwhile, I rejoiced in my good fortune. My husband and I unwrapped the Kendamas. In the bottom of the box was an assortment of candy, which I promptly ate. The purpose of the Kendama toy, in case you don’t know, is to swing the ball (the Ken) attached by a string to the dama and to try to land the ball in the cup. You can also try to flip it and land the ball in the second cup, or the hardest thing of all is to get it to land on the peg, putting the hole of the Ken on top of the peg on the dama. Uh, oh, I’m blushing.
While all of this fun was going on, I received an email from my Transaction Coordinator. She had used Pay Pal to buy a birthday present for her son and because the last time she used Pay Pal, she had shipped a gift to me, she did not change the ship-to address. In other words, I had received her son’s birthday present by mistake. She asked if I would drop the package at the office, and she would try to smooth things over with her son. His birthday was yesterday. Poor kid.
Only by now, one of our cats, I suspect it was Jackson, had climbed up on my desk and chewed through the string on one of the Kendamas. Good thing we had extra string in the box. Handed the string to my husband and asked him to fix it. We’re looking at both of the balls. The green glowy ball has a chip. The purple ball has a series of dents. Our eyes met: a kid would know.
Yes, I did end up buying an identical set of Kendamas and shipping them to my Transaction Coordinator. She protested, saying it was her fault, but it was really my fault. You see, a normal person would have realized when she opened the box that a children’s toy was not a gift to her, and that there was some kind of mistake. But not this person, because I am not what you would call a normal person. Apparently.
My Idea For an Episode of Portlandia
Every day I look for the silver linings in life; because no matter how stressful my day has been, there is always something good happening that I could focus my attention on instead. It’s my secret recipe for staying happy in the middle of strife and turmoil. You can’t be a real estate agent in Sacramento and not be on intimate terms with strife and turmoil in today’s real estate market.
The trick is to fill your brain with fun and interesting data, while leaving the essential facts such as the square footage and sales price of my Land Park listing at 1620 Sutterville Road still at the top of my brain. There is only so much room up there in the attic. At my age, it’s come to a point that if something goes in, something else has to come out. But I have left a space for smart entertainment. One such television show that I love to watch as I unwind from my day is Portlandia, and the new season of Portlandia has finally arrived.
It’s one of the few shows on TV that actually makes me laugh out loud. The writing and cast are brilliant. No wonder they attract such top name talent, too. It’s a little over the top, but only by a smidgeon. Not enough to be completely unbelievable. Besides, most funny things are based in truth somewhere along the line.
It carries over into my dreams, apparently. Because this morning I woke up in a bit of a haze from a dream in which I was writing a segment for Portlandia. It involved flat-screen TVs and how to watch DVDs, versus streaming video, versus TV, versus cable channels and recording 2 shows at once. Stuff your 5-year-old can do but you, being over the age of 30, cannot. And, then, the show ends with the two stars, Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen, sitting in a Home Depot on top of paint cans, sharing a bag of popcorn and watching a football game without sound on a big screen TV for sale.
Hey, Carrie, send the residual check to my home in Land Park. In the meanwhile, I won’t give up my day job of being a Sacramento real estate agent.
Photo of Portland, by Elizabeth Weintraub
Donate to the Pet Oxygen Mask Program
Find a need and fill it. That’s the simple premise behind most success stories. A company that is already successful has found another way to fill a need, and it’s pretty ingenious. What’s cool about this particular company that I’m about to share with you is its product can actually save the life of your pet, give you a tax deduction, and the company provides its product free to fire departments around the country, while still getting publicity for its own in-house product. It doesn’t get any better than that.
The product I’d like to introduce to you is an oxygen mask for pets. Not the drop-down kind from the overhead compartment when you’re flying because, let’s face it, you probably do not have a pet in your lap at that point. The pet oxygen mask is for pets who need oxygen because of a fire. For those who can’t make it out quickly enough from a burning house. Fires can happen anywhere and at anytime. I don’t even want to talk about what happens to trapped pets because it’s too horrific to picture.
This pet oxygen mask is small enough to fit a pet’s tiny little face or snout. They can’t wear masks made for people, you know. The company, Invisible Fence, is donating pet oxygen masks to fire departments to use with pets who need oxygen during an emergency. They even have a video that shows you how they do it.
Of course, there are only 2 cats featured in that video that I could see. One cat is held by a fireman who is dressed in full gear, head to toe, fully protected against the cat. The other cat is wrapped up in a towel. Whereas the dogs are happy as can be to put their snouts into an oxygen mask, the cats are probably, oh, let’s just say more reluctant, I’m betting. In fact, I have an idea for the cats. It might be easier to put a collar around their neck, one of those cone collars or inflatable collars, so they can’t get their feet up around their head to kick off the oxygen mask. My cat, Pia, is so happy to model an inflatable collar for you.
Maybe the idea is the cat is too weak to protest, but cats have amazing strength that pops up out of nowhere when they need it. It’s like a kryptonite power. Those of you who live with cats know exactly what I’m talking about. The exercise this power when it comes time to take a pill or get a toenail trim. They can almost turn themselves inside out, and you’re sitting there watching this remarkable feat and wondering how, how do they do that? It is it magic?
Yes, it is magic.
They say that cats will survive almost anything instinctively, and they know how to take care of themselves. They are the perfect hobos of domestic households. When my house fell into the ocean in Ventura some 30 years ago, my cat survived. I found him sitting at the top of the stairs of what remained of the house looking very nonplussed and wondering where his food bowl ended up.
Still, I’m happy to see a company that has found a way to fulfill a need and provide fire departments with free pet oxygen masks. To make a donation, you can go to Project Breathe, Pet Oxygen Mask Program by Invisible Fence Brand.
