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Elizabeth Weintraub
Another Amazing Bank of America Cooperative Short Sale
I closed another Bank of America cooperative short sale yesterday, this time in West Sacramento. The entire short sale was processed as smooth as silk. Our on market date to closing was fewer than 60 days, start to finish. This is because I prequalify my sellers whom I believe will be a good candidate for the Cooperative Short Sale. By the time we go on the market, we have the agreement in place to do a Cooperative and we have the preapproved price from Bank of America. Which in this case, was about $50,000 less than I anticipated.
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of rhyme nor reason to the valuations we receive from Bank of America. Most of the time, they are right on the nose, but sometimes the prices are too high and, every so often, they are a little too low. Even when they are low, though, it sets the stage for multiple offers, and multiple offers can push up that price.
When I sat at the dining room table with the sellers, I could see the little clouds of doubt lingering in their eyes. They were sharing with me their net worth and retirement plans, and I was explaining how Bank of America will most likely not request any financials, no tax returns, no bank statements; not even a hardship letter. It was clear that saying this was akin to telling them the Easter Bunny would hop into their yard in the early morning hours to hide Easter eggs. They nodded and looked thoughtful, but they had reservations, as any normal person would.
We went on the market, received several offers, and were in contract a few days later. The buyers absolutely loved the home. When Bank of America asked the sellers to submit a 4506T, that was the other shoe they had probably been waiting for to drop. But the 4506T was just a form, and whether the bank requested tax returns or didn’t, it had no bearing on the short sale.
The nicest part about the short sale is the fact the buyers gave the sellers permission to move at leisure, so there was no big rush at closing to get out. The sellers were able to stay current on their mortgage payments and were released from liability, plus the bank paid them a relocation incentive on top of an HIN incentive. Everybody got what they wanted, which makes for a very happy ending!
If you’re wondering whether you might qualify for a Cooperative Short Sale through Bank of America, call your Sacramento short sale agent, Elizabeth Weintraub, at 916 233 6759. I’ve closed many cooperative short sales; I know how everything works, and some sellers qualify for different types of programs. Don’t trust your future to some agent with an unproven track record. Get an expert.
Congressman Uses Political Power to Persecute a Short Sale Agent
A friend of mine, a real estate agent on the East Coast, is under investigation and accused of breaking the law when he did nothing of the sort. It’s a crazy situation, this short sale lawsuit, apparently brought on by vengeance and petty vindictiveness, in other words, it’s political. Some guy in Congress tried to buy a short sale. He wrote an offer that was contingent on selling his home and sent it to my friend, the listing agent.
Now, you and everybody from California to Florida knows that a contingent offer for a short sale has about a snowball’s chance in hell of getting accepted by the bank. All the short sale agents I know would advise their sellers to reject such an offer if, for no other reason, than they will undoubtedly receive another viable offer without such a contingency. A short sale bank is under no obligation to approve a short sale and, it is even less likely to do so, if the buyer is not in the financial position to purchase the home because the buyer has not yet sold his own home.
Moreover, to add more ammunition to his complaint, the congressman threw in a charge of misleading advertising because the listing agent advertised the home as a Wells Fargo short sale. He says the agent did not have the permission of Wells Fargo to market the home. The problem with this accusation is Wells Fargo does not give agents permission to market the home because agents are free to market the home without the permission of the short sale bank. In fact, the bank insists on it. On top of which, how the short sale will be processed and the length of time it will take to get approved all depends on the bank. Which is why all short sales are labeled by the lending institution.
You have your Bank of America short sales, Chase short sales, Ocwen short sales, Citimortgage short sales, Green Tree short sales, Nationstar short sales, and yes, your Wells Fargo short sales. Throw into that mix, say, a HAFA angle, and now you’ve got a Wells Fargo HAFA short sale.
But this legislator is having a hissy fit because his offer was not accepted by the seller and sent to the short sale bank. So, he’s coming after this listing agent with both barrels blazing by filing this short sale lawsuit. And he seems to have the state department of real estate commission riding halfback. He is using his political power to persecute an innocent person. This is indeed a sorry situation and a poor reflection on our political process that allows such a horrendous situation to move forward, particularly when it is baseless.
I have tried to be helpful to buyer’s agents and share with them the reason(s) the seller did not accept their offer. I think from now on I will keep my mouth shut. Because whatever you say, evidently, can come back to bite in the form of spite.
How a 21-Year-Old Can Buy a Home
My 21-year-old niece should be buying a home but instead she is spending an entire month’s take-home-pay to acquire a Sphynx kitten. I didn’t know what my sister had sent me when I first laid eyes on the photograph. She had sent a photo to my cellphone without any explanation, just asking what I thought. I said it looked horrid, like a Gollum
creature. That’s when she sprang the news that it was my niece’s new kitten and not some kind of joke.
When I asked my sister why my niece was still living with her instead of buying her own home, the answer was my niece doesn’t make enough money. Well, she does make enough money, she just doesn’t have two years on the job yet. She dropped out of college to take a job at a franchise shoe store in Minnesota selling shoes. Why? Because she likes shoes. Well, I like ice cream but you won’t see me handing out ice cream cones at Vic’s. Sometimes, I wonder if we are cut from the same cloth.
With a salary of $30,000 a year, my niece would easily qualify financially to buy a home. There are small homes in stable neighborhoods available for $100,000. With $3,500 down, my niece’s monthly payment at 4% interest, including taxes, insurance and private mortgage insurance would run about $625. That’s a 25% front-end ratio and very doable. It is cheaper for her to buy a home than to rent.
The neighborhood my sister lives in is near Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis. Homes are less expensive in this area of the city because planes fly very close overhead. You can almost see what passengers are drinking onboard. But it’s only a couple times a day, small price to pay for affordable lake living.
And let’s face it, you just can’t live with your mother forever, can you? Although, my sister says it’s like Grey Gardens at her house, and I believe it.
Photo: Laura’s new kitten, M. Burgard
Photo: Gollum, Photobucket
Stay Away From the Sacramento Short Sale Crooks
The problem that arises sometimes when taking over a listing — especially a botched short sale listing — is gaining the seller’s trust. Some sellers have been scammed so much, they don’t know where to turn nor whom to trust, and that’s pathetic. There are so many crooks in the short sale business. The crooks aren’t just the real estate agents, although there seems to be more of them than you’d probably suspect. The crooks are also the short sale negotiators, known as third-party negotiators hired by the agent, many of whom are not even licensed to legally do the job, on top of the buyers riding around in the back pockets of some of these agents.
The alarming thing is if you ask these people why they are crooks, they will tell you they are not crooks. And they will believe it. That’s how they get to be crooks because they believe their own lies.
It’s no wonder the short sale banks are cautious and careful, expecting every piece of documentation to be perfect. Seeing what I’ve seen in the short sale business, if I were the CEO of a short sale bank, I’d be scared crapless to approve some of the short sales because you just never know. Buyers are in cahoots with agents who are in cahoots with the negotiators, and they’re all in bed together. The person who doesn’t see any of this is the poor sellers. And why would they? What do they have to compare anything to? They have probably never done a short sale before and will never do a short sale again.
The best advice that I can give to a seller is if something seems too good to be true, check it out. Verify it. Talk to a person of authority and get advice. The buyers should not have a pre-existing relationship with the listing agent. The buyers should not be trying to simultaneously sell the property when they are buying the property. There should be no monkey business going on. The home should be priced at market value, not way below market value and sold to the lowest bidder. Deposits should be released to escrow.
Ask your Sacramento short sale agent to give you references. Prospective sellers are free to check out my Weintraub reviews online — real letters from real sellers. Find out how many short sales your proposed agent closes per year. Last year, for example, I sold more than 100 short sales. Does your short sale agent measure up? Probably not, but then there aren’t very many individual agents in Sacramento who sell as many short sales as I do. If the agent has closed 15 to 20 short sales, that’s a good number, though. Maybe you should hire that agent. Everybody and their grandmother is claiming to be a short sale expert today. Make them prove it.
Your agent should collect documents from you upfront. A hardship letter is a must for just about every kind of short sale, with a few exceptions. Tax returns, bank statements, payroll stubs, financials, all of these documents should be in your agent’s possession. If your agent does not negotiate the short sale, consider hiring a different short sale agent — an agent who does her own negotiation. Don’t let your future fall into the hands of a third-party vendor who doesn’t know you nor your situation. That’s a recipe for failure.
And listen to your gut instincts. If your gut tells you something is wrong, it probably is wrong. Very wrong.
Are You Wasting Your Time to Write a Purchase Offer?
Even with the temperature in Sacramento hitting 108 yesterday, people were still outside, running around and looking at homes to buy. What’s a little dry heat to us in Sacramento? Doesn’t slow a Sacramento resident down one little bit. The heat also matches the temperature of the real estate market; it’s so hot your fingers sizzle when wet.
I received phone calls, emails and text messages all day from other real estate agents and from buyers. When I explained that in case they had been living under a rock, or maybe in Stockton, our real estate market is producing multiple offers for highly desirable homes, some of them were displeased. Not every home on the market is popular. Those owners of unpopular homes are unlikely to receive multiple offers. If your home is special, though, or you have a home in Natomas or Elk Grove, look out, because you will get multiple offers.
The displeasure seemed to manifest from the possibility of multiple offers. I don’t believe that buyers should feel threatened by the fact that other buyers want what they want. It means they’ve chosen a desirable home to buy, and that home will be desirable when it comes time to sell. They shouldn’t really worry about what other buyers are doing; if they want the home, just put their best offer out there. Just write a purchase offer. Don’t try to be cute or to negotiate, if you want the home, go get it. If you play around and take chances, a buyer could lose the home.
One sentence, though, continued to pop up during my conversations with these people. It didn’t seem to matter if they were a real estate agent or a home buyer, they both said the same thing:
“I don’t want to waste my time writing an offer.”
First, as a real estate agent, we are never wasting our time writing an offer. That’s our business; it’s what we do for a living. Writing offers and getting them accepted is how we get paid. Sometimes, offers are rejected. It’s a fact of life. Why, a Sacramento real estate agent can end up with a rejected offer even if it’s the only offer the seller received. Moreover, since about 90% of the agents in Sacramento sell only 4 to 6 houses a year, just how precious is that agent’s time in the first place?
Second, as a buyer, you’ll never buy the house if you don’t write a purchase offer. Saying you don’t want to waste your time writing an offer is like asking for a guarantee. Since when do you get a guarantee in real estate? OK, I know some listing agents who will give you that guarantee, but I refuse to throw my seller under the bus. And that’s what you’re asking me to do when you come to me because I am the listing agent and say you don’t want to waste your time writing an offer through one of my team members. Who do you think I am? Tony Soprano?
If you seriously believe you’re wasting your time by writing an offer to buy a home in Sacramento, then you’re probably wasting your time talking to this Sacramento real estate agent. And if your time is wasted, what does it say about how you feel about mine?
