They say celebrities are just like us, except richer, better looking and skinnier.  Perhaps.

What is indisputable, however, is that they are not spared from suffering through falling property values and other economic hardships so many Middle Americans are suffering through today.  Many of these athletes or celebrities bought when they received their big paychecks, then fell behind on their payments when times became more difficult.  The amount of money involved may be greater, but the situations of underlying economic hardships are similar.

The list of celebrities who are utilizing short sales to avoid facing foreclosure is increasing; it includes such names as:  Terrell Owens, R.Kelly, Jamarcus Russell, Chris Tucker,  Carnie Wilson, and several Reality TV stars.  The list continues to grow.

Most of these highly paid athletes or celebrities have business managers, lawyers and accountants advising them and otherwise looking out for their financial interests.  If celebrities are doing short sales on their multi-million dollar homes because that is a better outcome than foreclosure, why wouldn’t it be good for the average homeowner?  What’s good for the goose must be good for the gander, right?

The chasm between the lifestyles of celebrities and those of Middle Americans seem to be shrinking.   Just as not every homeowner is facing foreclosure, not every celebrity is in the same situation.  However, just like Middle Americans, now celebrities who have fallen on hard times are choosing short sales over foreclosures.  A reversal in trend, where celebrities are now doing things Middle Americans  first made popular.      

Until this announcement was made, all HAFA short sales had to be taken out of Equator and handled through their third party vendor call centers and fax machines. This meant things took longer and the inefficiencies of faxing documents to various fax numbers and non-employees came back into play. (But to be fair, even Wells Fargo which also uses Equator, takes the same approach with HAFA short sales and removes them from Equator). But with the announcement today that HAFA short sales can be processed through Equator, all is right with the universe. Now only if Wells Fargo will follow suit.

Bofa Announcement

If you are one of the 10 Million Homeowners who is behind in mortgage payments and have come to the difficult conclusion that you can no longer afford to keep your home but also cannot sell it either and are looking for a way out, there are dignified solutions available to you.  Foreclosure is not the only course.  You may not be aware, but there are alternative solutions which may not only allow you to sell your current unsellable home, but may also provide you with  thousands of dollars to make it happen, if you qualify.

The HAFA (Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives) program is a Federal Government sponsored program to help homeowners in distress.  IT COSTS NOTHING TO THE HOMEOWNERS.   Real Estate agents can help you with the process, but the homeowners do not pay the Realtors; their commissions are paid from the proceeds of the HAFA sale.

Unfortunately, many homeowners are not aware and are being duped by swindlers who claim to be able to help.    Below are 10 signs of Mortgage Modification Scams.
Mortgage Payments Weighing You Down Report

How do you know someone has the technical, marketing and negotiational know-how to successfully help homeowners fight the devastation of foreclosures? Practice and experience are the keys to success; everything else is secondary or simple marketing gimmicks.

An expert does not merely engage in puffery regarding receiving nice titles and designations, they also bring about actual experience in favorable methodologies like short sales to help negotiate settlements to successful closings for clients. Real life experiences along with the incidental designations and certifications to bring about a complete skill-set which is actually beneficial to the homeowners. Some happy clients will even write up reviews about your service.

Unfortunately, practitioners in distressed real estate markets have been falling into two categories lately. There is one camp where the practitioner actually learns and take classes and builds experiences for the benefits of their clients. They do everything, like how real estate used to be. I fall into this category. When clients hire me, they know who will serve them from beginning to end; they know exactly who is representing their interests.

Then there is the new trend: practitioners take the short cut and hire a “third party short sale servicer or negotiator” to help them negotiate and settle with the lenders. Often times, the clients have no idea that someone else they never met or agreed to, is handling the most important aspect of the short sale transaction. I don’t know about you, but if I hired someone to do a job for me, then I expect that person to complete the entire job, not hire out someone they can hire for the least amount of money to do the hard part. I believe in quality control and I cannot control the quality of a person who takes on dozens of other agents’ workload. How much of their heart will they put into one of those files? Probably no more than the counterpart negotiator who is overloaded with files of homeowners at the banks. That is why I do not use; nor hire my skills out to lesser experienced agents for money.

With my clients, they know exactly who is doing everything from the marketing to final negotiating to sitting with them at the signing table at the closing. I guess I share the same philosophy as Steve Jobs at Apple: vertical integration of both hardware and software to control quality and end user experience. I control the full experience that the client has with my service: both the marketing to sell the house and the negotiations with lenders to have them release the liens and deficiency claims for less than what is owed. Conceptually, you can have two approaches: the Apple approach or the Microsoft approach. I just happen to believe in the Apple approach as being more efficient and effective. If you believe in the Mircrosoft approach your selection if fine, as long as you were informed others would be doing the negotiations.

So back to the question about how do you know someone has the necessary practice and experience? Ask for proof of successful closing to demonstrate their experience.

These are both financially and emotionally difficult times for these homeowners and also ideal climate for swindlers to come swooping in. However, there is a solution available for these homeowners without falling victim to fraud. I invite you to do your due diligence and find an agent who can help you out of this dilemma who has the experience, the skill set and references to protect your financial future.

Change the Course Report

A prospective client came asking for help.  She had a short sale specialist working on her case for over a year.  The thing was, this agent was not even local (from San Diego) and would only tell her that things were going well for well over a year; not much communication, just that things were OK every few months.  The distance probably had something to do with the lack of continual communication.

Only recently, did she receive a call from him saying the lender would not be approving the short sale and would now be foreclosing. This came as a complete shock to her.  This was obviously a case of dual track foreclosure or simple negligence on the part of the agent.  She said the agent was basically backing out and telling her that he could no longer help her.  She wanted to know if I could help by replacing him.

It’s easy to wonder why someone would simply trust an agent for over a year and not ask questions or demand that she be kept apprised of the status of the short sale more frequently than a few times a year.  I pulled up the county record to see how much time was remaining on a Notice of Trustee Sale (NOT) and to see if we could save the short sale.  My search found that the NOT was filed over 3 months ago.  I needed to get more information.

I asked her to get a copy of her file since the agent was essentially firing himself and I needed to know what type of communication had been initiated and what the lenders had agreed to in writing.  I also asked her to get me a copy of the NOT to find out the attorney service handling the sale.

After a week or so, I followed up and not surprisingly, she got nothing from this agent.  Nothing in writing.  Not a copy of the NOT; not a rejection of the short sale letter from the lender; not a copy of the short sale package that was submitted on her behalf; not even a cancellation of the listing agreement; nothing.  Only words.

I wanted to help her, but with no documentation and only verbal statements, I could not commit myself to help her out of her predicament.  Given her particular situation, I seriously doubt anyone could help her with no documentation of what had happened before and being asked to step in only with the verbal understanding that foreclosure is imminent.

How could this individual have avoided this type of crisis?  I’m not going to go into allegations here without seeing any documentation, but it seems like the agent who professed to be a specialist perhaps was not so experienced.

I believe she did not have to be in this situation.  The best way to have avoided this crisis, in my opinion, was for her to have done her due diligence when hiring someone to help her out initially.   You really do not get a second chance when you are dealing with foreclosures.

First, she should have hired someone locally rather than someone who is 500 miles away to market and sell her home.  From what was described to me, he really didn’t know the local market and did not price it correctly nor put in a lot of effort to get it marketed correctly.  If she were not getting answers, she could have dropped in on a local agent to demand answers in a more timely manner.

Secondly, she is a young computer literate woman; she should have done some research into who she was hiring.  After all, she found me online.  She should have Googled the person’s name and see what was said about the individual.  She may not have gotten everything she needed, but she would have discovered if someone were alleging bad service or worse.  People may not write nice things about you, but if they felt mistreated, they will let the world know, from my experience.

Please distressed homeowners, do your due diligence before hiring someone to help you.

You are at the end of your ropes and came to the conclusion that you can no longer afford to keep your home.  If there were a way to help sell your home and protect your financial future, would you seek help?

If the government had a program which would help pay for a portion of your loan obligation and also help pay for your moving expenses, would you seek help?

If the government had a program which would insure that the lenders would not come after you for deficiency that results from what you borrowed versus what you ultimately re-pay them, would you seek help?

If the government said until 2012, the IRS will not collect taxes on the gains that result from the lenders forgiving you for portions of your loan, would you seek help?

Many homeowners are continuing to suffer because unemployment rate is still 10% in Silicon Valley and loan modifications are still very difficult to obtain  or may be secretly a victim of dual track  foreclosure.  If you saw no other way out except to sell your unaffordable home through a short sale using the HAFA program to obtain all of the above-mentioned benefits, would you seek help?

If the answer to the above questions were yes, then you may be a candidate for the HAFA short sale program.  Most major lenders are participants of this program which was designed to help distressed homeowners avoid foreclosure.  It is one of the few government programs designed to help struggling homeowners that actually works.

However, time is running out and you may not be able to take advantage of all of these wonderful benefits after the end of calendar year 2012.  So please contact us to find out more and see if you can qualify for all of these free benefits, including money to help settle your other liens and help you move.  Help is available to you, not taking advantage of this program is wasteful and can be disastrous to your financial future.  You have an obligation to help yourself by finding out more.

You may be fortunate and not be in a situation to take advantage of these benefits offered by this program.  However, if you know someone who may be able to benefit, then please forward this link and help them take advantage of these benefits and free money.   You will be helping someone out a very difficult situation.  It may be the right thing to do.

Sometimes, rather than reading about something, it is much easier to absorb the information by watching a video. Fortunately, the CDPE organization has published some videos which are short and to the point. Since they have made the effort to produce these little gems, I feel it is only right that I share them with my readers. Enjoy.

This first one answers the question: what is a short sale?

Another short sale approval came in today.    Another young family can now move forward and use the $3,000 check to help them relocate.  This was a HAFA short sale and another $6,000 from the proceeds were given to the second lien holder to help settle their claim.  After submitting the offer, it took less than 45 days to get the final approval.   This approval again, contradicts the rumors floating around out there that HAFA automatically causes delays in short sales.   HAFA deals with deadlines and was designed to speed up the process.

It was good for the bank, the seller and the buyer.   The house may not have sold for the amount borrowed, but we received a fair market value offer that was sufficient to pay monies to all parties involved to get them all to settle.   A happy day for all.  A good day for all.
Wells Fargo Approval

The word is getting around.  JP Morgan Chase and other large lenders are actively encouraging homeowners who are in distress and not able to make their mortgage payments by offering them incentives of up to $25,000 if they are successful in short selling their homes.  So far this has only been information from third parties and other sources whose clients were solicited by mail.   Today, I learned that one of my colleagues had a client reach out to him because Chase had wanted the borrower to do a Short Sale with a CDPE designated agent if they wanted to receive $25,000.   Silicon Valley Homeowners, if you receive this type of letter, you need to contact a CDPE designated short sale specialist like myself.

I need to point out that not everyone is automatically extended this offer.  You must be the recipient of a letter specifically offering you the money.     But one thing is certain: this is no joke, this is happening because the lenders like Chase have figured out that they can still make more money by permitting short sales to be completed than go into foreclosure.   Banks never do anything unless they can make money as the end result.