Alright guys, I’m going to give you three tips on what you should do if you’re about to start a short sale.
Number one, get all the information before you go on the appointment. When you talk to the seller, you should be pre-qualifying them to make sure that you’re not wasting your time. You need to be asking who the lenders are, you need to be asking who’s on the actual mortgage?
There’s a list of questions that you need to be asking upfront, get everything upfront, don’t be that agent that’s going to the appointment with just a listing agreement.
Number two, make sure you get the lender-specific forms. If the seller tells you that they have a Bank of America loan, go to the Bank of America website or call Bank of America and ask them what do they need specifically for the short sale.
This will save you a lot of time and a lot of effort down the road trying to hound the seller to sign the bank-specific forms, when you could have brought it to the appointment in the beginning.
Number three, find out if the homeowner is in foreclosure and get that information upfront. I can’t tell you how many times that I’ve gone on appointments in the very beginning and I definitely learned my lesson, when homeowners were either already foreclosed on, meaning that they no longer even have the house to sell, or they were only days away from auction.
Make sure you have that information upfront so you know what kind of deadlines you’re up against. It’s really important when you’re going to do a short sale to get as much information.
What we say in my office is that we are proactive instead of reactive. The more information that you have, the better and the smoother the process will go. Trust me.
It’s hard enough to do a short sale, when you don’t have all the information you have no idea what you’re up against. If you have any questions you can always go to our website thessqueen.com, you can also get my book Short Sales Uncensored, an overview of the questions to ask in detail as well as the entire short sale process. Also we have our Facebook group The Only Short Sale Group Worth Being A Part Of. Til next time!