Email Elizabethshort sale
The Short Sale Law of Averages
I think the law of averages says that for every three good things that happen, something else awful will happen. So, no matter what, I’m always ahead, right? Like receiving 3 short sale approval letters on a Monday (of all days) for 3 Sacramento short sales leaves room for something else to explode. I didn’t know if I would be able to pull two of those short sales out the fire. We had a huge disagreement between the second lenders and the first lenders. It was the usual disagreement: The first lender wanted to pay less and the second lender wanted more.
But in the end, they met in the middle. There was a bit of compromise. Negotiating a short sale is not always about power plays. It’s about give and take and options. It’s about having a Plan B and a Plan C. It’s about about patience and not letting personal feelings about anything enter the equation. Mr. Spock would have made a good short sale negotiator. James T. Kirk, not so much.
In the second short sale, it had been a long battle between two lenders as well. The bank originally wanted to give the seller many, many thousands of dollars. But the second lender refused to approve that scenario, and that was understandable. I don’t know if it’s because we wore them out with our incredible staying power or because of our luck that HAFA regulations had changed in June so we could give the second more money, but we finally brought both parties to an agreement.
Just as we’re patting ourselves on the back for a job well done, a short sale set to close this week blew up. All of a sudden the buyer backed out. Oh, he gave some lame excuse like they all do when they cancel but bottom line is he bolted. After 11 months of waiting for HAFA short sale approval from Bank of America. That makes little sense. We were so close to closing. This is like crawling across the desert without water to find a mirage.
See, agents often ask why I ask so many questions, why I insist on commitment, and this is why. Because we want buyers to close the short sale after we obtain short sale approval.
Handling a Short Sale Counter Offer
When a short sale bank issues a counter offer, it’s not really a counter offer. Except that it is. It’s just not the type of counter offer that most Sacramento real estate agents recognize. Confused? A short sale counter offer arrives in different forms. Sometimes it looks like Buddha, and other times you’d swear it’s sporting a black cloak and wielding a scythe. It can be in writing or it can be verbal. The counter can be negotiable or non negotiable.
An agent in my office called yesterday about a Chase Bank short sale. I realize that my company has managers who answer these sorts of questions, and they do a bang-up job. But agents also get antsy and don’t always want to wait for a response. Imagine that. An impatient real estate agent! So, every so often, the brave ones call me. I don’t mind helping out a fellow Lyon agent now and then as long as they don’t make it a practice, although I wish they would email and not call.
The agent who called, a super sweet guy, was bent on explaining his entire short sale woes. As I’m listening to him, I’m watching phone calls come across my cellphone screen like a CNN scroll. I ponder whether I should send text messages to the unanswered phone calls and, if so, should I choose the response that says I’m at the dentist or is it better to simply say I’m busy, or don’t they already know that since I didn’t pick up my phone? Do I have to tell them I am awake? Is it any of their business what I am doing?
I like the prepared response choice that says I’m at the dentist because it sounds more respectable than to text my real GPS location, which is I’ve got my head stuck in the frozen dessert section at Safeway, fogging up the freezer. Finally, in my distractions and attempt to focus on my fellow agent’s question, I found myself needing to pull him in that direction as well. I cut to the Chase. Ooo, a pun. I interrupted him and said, “Phone messages are piling up while you are telling me your story, exactly what is your question?”
He wanted to know how Chase issues its short sale counter offers. It felt weird to him that the short sale agent would just call and tell him the price had changed and that the buyer had to pay some other miscellaneous fee. Maybe he expected the counter offer would be white-glove delivered on a silver plate with a juicy JPMorgan Chase insignia wax seal on the envelope. Nope, it’s verbal. Chase short sales are still old school. Documents are faxed to a central location and then lost, just like the old days at Bank of America.
Speaking of which, I received a counter from Bank of America yesterday on a Cooperative Short Sale. Most of the time a buyer’s agent never knows that a counter offer has been accepted unless he or she reads my short sale updates on my website. That’s because counters don’t often involve the buyer. The bank is simply approving or rejecting fees the seller must pay from the proceeds of sale to close. The bank authorizes the expenses of sale. The lower the fees, the higher the bank’s net. It is the seller who pays the fees, not the bank.
This was unusual because the accepted sales price exceeded the preapproved listed price of this Cooperative Short Sale. We had received a number of multiple offers on this short sale. We picked the best offer, which is not necessarily the highest offer. I imagined the buyer would be somewhat stunned to receive an addendum increasing the price and paying a few additional fees. But the bottom line is we want to close this short sale. The bank’s investor has guidelines.
Bank of America stresses that in a Cooperative Short Sale, the preapproved short sale price is precisely that: preapproved. It doesn’t say it will accept that list price. The bank’s investor calls the shots. The buyer, naturally, wanted to know if she could negotiate with the bank, and see, this is the thing. Will another buyer pay that price? In a heartbeat. I know this; it’s not speculation. So, the buyer accepted the Bank of America short sale counter, which is a good thing. Smart buyer, smart buyer’s agent. You know what we call a buyer who doesn’t want to accept a bank’s counter offer like this one? Let’s just say the term doesn’t have buyer attached to it.
Who Will Buy My Home in Sacramento?
It doesn’t matter where you live in Sacramento, there is a buyer for your home. Every Sacramento real estate agent knows this fact but sellers aren’t always certain. Home sellers often worry that their home will not sell. It’s their biggest fear. It’s even a bigger fear when that home needs to be sold as a short sale over a traditional sale, but every home in Sacramento has a buyer waiting somewhere to buy it. I guarantee it.
How can I be so overly confident? Because I’ve been in the real estate business for more years than I care to admit, and I’ve never yet found a home that somebody, somewhere would not buy. Never said to myself that I can’t sell this. It’s just not a possibility. That attitude does not exist.
Now, that’s not to say a home seller can’t help the process along because he or she absolutely can. There are small improvements that can be made to help sell. Often tiny things. Ask your agent. It helps to start by sitting or standing in each room and looking at it. Clear out the noise and the distractions. Focus on the room and the view to the room. Think about how it makes you feel. Is there anything irritating about it? Are there things you love about it? The secret? Get rid of the irritation and accentuate the love.
When I talk to sellers about listing a Sacramento home for sale, I ask why they bought it. I also want to know why they are selling. I might come across as a nosey real estate agent but that information helps me to do my job. For example, I had couple of sellers in Elk Grove tell me that they bought their home because they were standing in front of the door to the pool area in the family room doing a 360. As they spun, they grabbed each other in excitement because they could not believe that they could afford to buy this home. I asked them to show me the exact spot where they were spinning when this happened.
During the open house, I found myself talking to a young couple. This would be their first home. They definitely wanted to buy a pool home. I took their hands and said: Come with me. I positioned them in the spot where the present owners had stood on the day they decided to buy. I said to them, turning in a circle and holding out my arms: Can you believe that you can afford to buy this home? And I reaffirmed it. Yes, you can buy this home. It is true. Believe it.
And you know what? They bought it.
They bought it because the buyer for your home is a person just like you.
The Length of Time for a Sacramento Short Sale Listing
Home sellers don’t always read everything they sign, especially a real estate listing agreement. But I think it’s important for people to know what they are signing, so when I meet with sellers in Sacramento, I explain the purpose of each document. Sometimes, I can sense that they wish I would simply shut my trap and let them sign. They often don’t care. They just want to put that Sacramento home on the market and get it sold. They want to know where to initial and where to sign. Beyond that, it doesn’t much matter.
If I am meeting with a let’s-hurry-up-and-sign-these-stupid-documents-seller, I do point out a couple of things, nonetheless. That’s because I am sensitive to the mistrust issue. They don’t know this Sacramento real estate agent, but they have had friends tell them not to trust real estate agents. They’ve heard the stories. It’s unfortunate that I am in an industry that generates mistrust like this, but it exists, and I’d be foolish to ignore it. I don’t ever want to give any client any reason, regardless of how minute, to mistrust me because, believe it or not, I am actually on my client’s side. I want what is best for them.
So, I take a moment to point out when signing in person the length of my listing agreements. I don’t want a seller to discover it later and freak out. The term of a listing agreement is negotiable between the seller and the Sacramento listing agent. Having said that, I have my own practice of how I do things. I know what works and what doesn’t for me. I don’t vary my standard of practice. If a seller wants me to do something differently than the standard way I do things, then they can hire a monkey. There are monkeys for hire in this business. They can hire a monkey who will leap from tree to tree and do somersaults in the air for them. Maybe their home will sell and maybe it won’t. If they want performance and a guarantee on that performance, then they will let me explain how I do business and list with me on my terms. Over 30-some years, I’ve earned that right.
Especially when it comes to a short sale. I consider myself to be an experienced short sale agent. People know my name in Sacramento. I’ve closed hundreds of short sales in Sacramento. But I can’t guarantee that a short sale will close in 90 days. There are too many variances. Things beyond my control. I do my best to reign them in and prevent crap from happening, but I can’t guarantee that it won’t. This means I take my short sale listings for a year. Yup, 12 months minimum. Not because I think it will take a year but because I don’t know. Every short sale is different. That’s actually insurance for the sellers that I won’t bail on them. I won’t jump ship and leave them stranded. If a buyer cancels, I’ll find another buyer. If that buyer cancels, I’ll keep on finding buyers until we close.
But if a seller doesn’t want that kind of dedication and level of service, then by all means, list with some other Sacramento short sale agent.
Did Karma Close This Bank of America Cooperative Short Sale?
Do you believe in karma? You might be surprised. My husband and I had dinner last night at one of our favorite restaurants in Midtown Sacramento: The Waterboy. When the bill arrived, my husband whipped out a gift certificate. Who sent us that? Turns out it was a gift from a client. A husband and wife for whom I had done a Bank of America Cooperative Short Sale. They were a couple another Sacramento real estate agent might refer to as high maintenance. Agents call clients “high maintenance” if clients behave outside the norm or require more work, reassurance, or explanations than other clients.
I call it business. I’ve been around the block.
This couple had asked me to come into the office on a Saturday to talk with them. I ordinarily do not consult with clients about a short sale because I am not a lawyer. I don’t really give in-office consultations nor do I charge an hourly fee. I get paid on commission. Believe it or not, I do most of my real estate business via phone and email. Very little of it is in person. I am not high pressure nor would I ever try to force a seller into doing a short sale. Sellers typically need to come to that decision on their own, but I’m happy to help walk them through the pros and cons of their particular situation on the phone.
Although I do sell real estate on the weekends, I don’t do it in person. I don’t get dressed up, put on makeup and drive down to the office. I paid that price years ago, and I don’t do it today. If a client wants to meet with me in person, we meet during the week in daylight hours, like any other business person. It’s a misnomer that an agent must be on call 24 / 7. I am not ashamed to say that I have over $20 million in closed and pending sales so far this year, so if I’m telling you that I don’t have to go into the office on the weekends to be successful, it’s the truth.
Yet, this client desperately needed to meet on a Saturday. She and her husband lived out of the area and they could not meet any other day in Sacramento. So, I made an exception for them. It wasn’t a big transaction, either. It was a small short sale in Antelope. Around $125,000. I might have grumbled a little to my husband, but I went. You know why? Because these people needed my expertise. Who else would do a Bank of America Cooperative short sale for them? There aren’t very many short sale agents in Sacramento who know how to do this kind of transaction; in fact, I don’t know of any. I specialize in Cooperative short sales. They needed help. They were also really nice people. I like working with nice people.
Every client is different. They don’t always fit the mold we agents set. Some need a little bit more help and explanations than other clients. I certainly wasn’t expecting a gift certificate from them to The Waterboy, though. That was a surprise. See, karma has a way of coming around.
