What is your plan to stop your foreclosure?
“What is your plan?” When I ask this question, the typical response is something in the order of: “What plan? I didn’t know you needed one.”
I ask this question of my buyers who want to get that “deal” and I also ask that of my sellers who want to sell quickly with no hassle and get top dollars. I use the analogy that a real estate related plan is like having a well platted map before going on a long trip (the analogy still works in this day of the GPS). You may eventually get there, but if you have a well organized plan or a map, you can save tremendous amounts of time, money and heartache and give yourself the opportunity to enjoy the trip rather than wasting time sweating the details on the fly. In Real Estate, you don’t get that deal or you don’t get that multiple offer scenario by accident; there is always lots of work done beforehand.
Most of us would not consider taking our family to Disneyland or Legoland or wherever our destination is, without having some sort of itinerary. Yet, in these difficult times, when it is now so common for homeowners to be struggling to make their mortgage payments and who are facing the very real possibility of foreclosures, homeowners try to “wing it” and approach this very long and arduous trip without any sort of planning or assistance. Almost hoping that foreclosure can be avoided by accident or hoping to talk to someone who will understand and sympathize with their plight and make things stop. Unfortunately, that rarely happens.
Foreclosure is a process driven activity, which means activities are laid out in sequential order. In order to successfully fight a foreclosure, you must understand the process and have a plan to fight the lender and stop the sequence so the final step – foreclosure – is not achieved.
Fighting foreclosure is not something I can write about in a few paragraphs in this blog; as you can imagine, it is much more complex and the situations and hardships differ from homeowner to homeowner. However, I do have a report here which will explain simply and provide information so that the distressed home owner can take action to stop the foreclosure process and learn about the foreclosure prevention options that are available to them. Some sort of action must take place; inaction will not stop, but in most cases will accelerate the foreclosure process.
My Rivermark condo (Miraval) got 21 offers!
This is a milestone in my career. It is the highest number of offers I received in my real estate career: 21 offers on this short sale listing. Been on the market 10 days. Of course, the fact that the owner has tremendous taste and the property shows better than if a professional stager had set up the place helps. However, in the end, its all about planning.
Planning to make sure the listing is plastered all over the net and can be found any where. Planning to make sure that all of the local Realtors know about it so they can get their clients interested. Planning to make sure there is a sense of urgency so that people want make sure they don’t want to miss out on the chance to own it. Planning to make sure that the price is right and it drives multiple offers. Planning to make sure that the buyers will stay engaged and not want to pull out of the deal. Planning to make sure that the lenders who own the mortgage will see that the offer submitted will be better than market price.
Many think these multiple offer situations happen by accident. The truth is, there is excessive planning involved to bring these “accidents” to fruition.
