San Jose Short Sale Agent: Silicon Valley Foreclosure Prevention Specialists

Why would banks agree to a short sale when they know they are going to be losing money?  This is the question I get posed to me frequently.  My answer: it costs them less money than to foreclose on a property; lenders’ primary responsibility is to mitigate their losses. Once we understand that, then the concept of a short sale is really not a mystery.

When you speak with short sale negotiators and other people in the industry, it is common knowledge that banks make more money when the sale is completed through a short sale, rather than permitting a property to go into foreclosure.  This was the unspoken truth that everyone acknowledged but no lender published any data to support or deny these truths.  Not having published data can be problematic for bloggers, as  postings are much more credible when there is data to support your contentions, rather than anecdotal evidence.

Today, for the first time, I discovered published data which sheds light into the true disparity between homes that are disposed as short sales vs. those disposed as REOs after returning to the lenders after foreclosures.    Short Sales net the banks between 13-26% more than REO sales according to Clayton Holdings after conducting a 6 month survey conducted between October 2009 – March 2010. (I’ve heard some higher numbers from other industry insiders).

13-26% is a nice tidy bag of cash for the lender holding those underwater mortgages; fantastic job of mitigating their loss.   And people still wonder why short sales are approved.

Now they can move on with their lives and leave behind the difficult phase of their lives.   Feels good to be a part of the solution.

This is an excellent article about the general overview of how short sales are reaching into the mainstream of the real estate industry.

The article, however, leaves a false impression that the REO listings are receiving more money because they close at 99% compared to 91% for short sales. However, there are plausible explanations for the differences in those two closing ratios.

1.  Short Sales generally have to start off at market price and require systematic price reductions which must be justified to the lenders for them to agree to the sale. Because buyers want deals but the lenders want to start with market price, price reductions are inevitably built in to the process.  Whereas in a REO, the bank and its accountants have pre-determined their bottom-line net price, which is typically below market rate.  Because they are dealing with bottom-line net prices, the banks will rarely agree to accept prices that are far off their list price, if at all.  By contrast, there is a bit more latitude in negotiating price in a short sale.

2.  In addition to having to start off at market price, comparable short sales generally list at a higher price point because owners typically live there and take better care of their homes where their family still resides; compare that to an REO where the owners often destroy many components of the house during the eviction process.  Short sales show better so are also more popular because they are closer to move-in condition that REOs.

So despite the impression that short sale properties receive less money, the reality is that short sale properties, sell at higher price points for comparable properties, yet close at a lower ratio relative to list/sold price because of the lenders demands to list at or near market price.

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It’s  about time!

Those of us who specialize in short sales obviously know, believe and have been evangelizing about the fact that short sales not only help the homeowners but the lending institutions as well.  Unfortunately, there is a lot of misconception and misinformation floating about out there (especially on the internet by unenlightened, so-called “authorities”) who try to contradict these facts and – for whatever reason – plant seeds of doubt in confused homeowners’ minds.    Unfortunately these doubts germinate into inaction and often end up denying a perfectly viable alternative (inaction leading to foreclosure) to distressed homeowners who need them most, out of their difficult situations.

Now the Treasury has finally taken a position and set things straight with HAFA (Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives):  short sales are better for homeowners than foreclosures because: 1) they preserve the homeowner’s credit rating, especially in obtaining Fannie Mae loans in a much quicker manner and 2) they are also better for the lending institutions because the former typically gets higher prices than foreclosed properties.  These are truly win-win situations for the homeowners and lenders and that is precisely why the Treasury is pushing to make them easier to complete if a loan modification is not viable.

This program tries to address a lot of what is wrong with the short sale process, however, in my opinion, it addresses the single biggest enemy of short sale practitioners: the dreadfully drawn out approval process by many lenders. (Although prior to HAFA, some lenders decided on their own to streamline the approval process.)  It is not uncommon for the approval process to take 3+ months due to a combination of inadequate staffing and simple bureaucracy.  It will be manna from heaven to reduce the approval timeframe to only 10 days, as opposed to months.  Short Sales get a bad reputation because buyers often walk out of a deal because they are simply tired of waiting for the lender approvals and buy different, unencumbered properties.   An approval or denial within 10 days will save many, many short sale deals and give the distressed homeowners dignified resolutions to their financial ordeals.

Granted, HAFA, like HAMP (Home Affordable Modification Program) cannot be forced on the lenders, but at least it will lend political and social pressures on these mega-lending institutions which have been given so much assistance during their difficult times by the Treasury. This is definitely something in the right direction in addressing our foreclosure fiasco by the Obama Administration.