San Jose Short Sale Agent: Silicon Valley Foreclosure Prevention Specialists

Usually things slow down to an almost  grinding halt the week before Christmas, especially for  the loss mitigation departments and banks.  You can tell people are taking time off or are calling in sick as responses to emails and calls backs from voice-mails take longer and longer.   So typically, your San Jose Short Sale Agent who also happens to be your San Jose Short Sale Expert, sits about waiting to hear back or is still buying last minute presents on Amazon.

However, a local family got some wonderful news today as the approval from their second lender came in today.   The first lender approved about a week ago, so we were just waiting for the second to approve and waive their deficiency claim.  Typically, the second lenders negotiate hard because they are receiving pennies out of the dollar assigned to them from the first lenders.  But perhaps due to the yule tide joy in the air, this negotiator backed down without much of a fight.  Whatever the reason was, it was  good for the sellers and are ready to close.

Now the uncertainty is over and this family can have a wonderful Holiday Season knowing that their sale has been finally approved.  The buyers family was happy to learn that they are able to purchase the house they have wanted.  Everyone was happy to learn about this wonderful approval only days before Christmas.    I truly felt good calling all of the involved parties to let them know about the good news. It was a very good day today.  I can go back to buying presents online.

Continued…..

According to Negotiator A, they were having some systems issues which prevented them from having full access. Whatever the problem was, it was now resolved.   The  final approval from Negotiator A came and was agreed to by the sellers today; we are to close escrow the first week of January 2011.

Everyone is happy: Lender A, Lender B, Sellers and Buyers.   This long, and arduous process has essentially come to a near perfect ending.  Who said Real Estate business is boring?

Continued……

When I tried to explain the situation to Negotiator A that Negotiator B was out sick and I would try to get the approval to him before 10 AM the following morning, he told me it was too late.  He assured me that because I missed the deadline he gave me, he could not stop the sale.  I refused to concede and told him I would get it to him before the sale, even if it was too late and a waste of time.  I would not give up my effort or hope.

Needless to say, despite my protest to him that I would not give up, I felt devastated inside.   How was I going to get an approval a matter of a few hours the next morning when I couldn’t get anyone on the phone?  Things looked truly bleak.

I started calling at 7 AM the following morning and got Negotiator B, her executive office and a senior manager involved and yelled, screamed, threatened and otherwise made a lot of noise to a lot of people.  I was such a pain and made so many calls, I managed to get an approval letter generated in 3 hours!

By the time I got the letter in my Inbox, it was 10AM.  By the time I was able to send the letter to Negotiator A, it was 10:05 AM, 5 minutes after the sale date. When I called Negotiator A to check his Inbox, he told me not to waste his time.   He wasn’t even going to bother sending the approval letter to his superiors to attempt to stop the sale, but I begged and cajoled him into forwarding it, despite being a few minutes late.  I just had to hope for the best.

Three days later, Negotiator A still claims not to know what happened, but I called the Reconveyance Company and learned that the sale was stopped and the sale date has been postponed.  Why Negotiator A will not give me details about the extension and status when Negotiator B and the buyer both keep calling to find out what is going on  is beyond me.  But all I need to know for right now is that the auction was extended and we have more time to close this sale.

“Never Give Up” is emblazoned on the side of Queen of Apostles Church on my route home.  I’ve read this for years and perhaps that phrase had embedded itself deeply into my consciousness, but that was exactly how I felt on that Monday after Thanksgiving.  If I had given up because Negotiator A told me it was not possible, or even when I felt hopeless upon discovering Negotiator B called in sick on the due date, then I would not have had the pleasure of telling the sellers that I was able to get the auction date extended and to give them hope that we will succeed in fighting their foreclosure; and it makes me feel pretty good about myself too.

Let me just start by saying this is my effort at sharing an experience I encountered today so that newer agents out there do not fall into the same trap.  Hopefully someone can walk away having learned something positive from this experience.

I have always believed the first rule of negotiations is to know where you stand before you engage the other party. Pretty elementary, right?  Sort of the first rule of negotiations 101.

Well, it seems that little gem of advice is sometimes lost to Realtors out there who proclaim themselves as  being “professional negotiators” as if that were a special badge of honor that only a handful secretly receive.  We Realtors are all negotiators, it just seems some are better prepared and do the prep work to insure they do not look incompetent.

Unfortunately, these days, in their desperation to close any deal, agents sometimes open themselves up to ridicule and more importantly, do their clients a dis-service by not being adequately prepared when they negotiate. Not only will they not get a deal, they may possibly lose the client whom they failed to protect.

I am engaged with a veteran agent (probably 30 years in the business) who is on the buy side of a deal.   The deal is taking longer than anticipated because one of the lenders is dragging their feet in coming to a decision on a short sale.  Everyone is frustrated including me, so I understand his impatience.  But nothing can happen until the second approves the deal.

But today he was trying to re-negotiate the price on the deal in a back-handed way which I did not really appreciate.  First, he claimed that the prices in the complex were falling drastically in the past two weeks and he now believed his client was over-paying for the property.  I told him if he believed that to be true, then his clients had the right to back out and I would return the deposit; I have a back up offer that will be glad to fill in.  (His claim of prices in the complex dropping is incorrect).   Secondly, he claimed we may not close in time to claim his client’s $8,000 tax credit because we cannot, at this point close escrow by June 30 (This is true).  Finally, he claimed his client was further harmed because the California Tax Credit (up to $10,000) had been exhausted within 2 weeks of it being announced (This was news to me) and he couldn’t get that either, so he wanted to reduce the offer price.

I understood the message he was trying to convey: 1) that the prices in the complex were falling and 2) the California Tax Incentives had run out and his client was depending on that.  He was claiming his client was hit with a double whammy.  Well, I would have been sympathetic if he had verified these claims before he made them to me and tried to unilaterally re-negotiate the contract.

1.  He was simply uninformed about the prices in the complex.  They were not falling dramatically, an identical unit had come on the market only 7 days ago for nearly $10,000 more than the price he offered to pay.  This is basic stuff, you check the comps before you talk prices.   2.  His claim that the Tax Credit fund had been exhausted, was again, an incorrect claim.  http://www.ftb.ca.gov/individuals/new_home_credit.shtml The fund is only 57% depleted!  I have no reason to lower the price; I am thinking he should raise the price since the house looks like a better deal now than before.

I shot down the grounds for his argument in 5 minutes.  He could easily have verified the information if he took 10 minutes to go online and look them up before he made these false claims to me. This is an individual who has been selling real estate for probably close to 30 years.  This was simply embarrassing for him and certainly did not make his client’s case any stronger.  Now I question whether I want to continue to do business with him or simply deal with the back up offer.   What was he thinking?  All he managed to demonstrate today was that he doesn’t know the first thing about negotiating and now has planted a seed in my head as to whether he is a competent agent or not.

Folks, check the comps and do your due diligence before you start making claims which could back fire on you and your clients.  That’s your job.