Hello all, welcome to blog number 4! *whoo hoo im climbing up the ranks here! Today im going to tackle Short Sales offers, Bank REO offers, What you should weigh when offering, and terrible listing agents and their ridiculous methods.

Ok first off I will dive into Short Sales and REO properties. REO's are taking off! They are RED HOT right now! Just recently I put an offer in on one for a client; We were the first one's in the house, and had an offer in writin and faxed over when the listing was only 14 hours old! well by hour 48 the listing agent had 8 offers! REO's are flying off the shelves! Well considering what you offer is a humongous factor now. Yes, it IS a buyer's market, but with all these REOs and Short Sales providing some of the greatest buys of all time, competition is startin to heat up! REO's are entering escrow in as little as a week! that's breakneck speed. Like the one mentioned above, it's in escrow, and took 4 days to get there. Another great asset with the Short Sales is that they're being submitted to the lender, The lender finally gets back an answer after dragging their feet and passing the buck, and the buyer can't qualify! So what you're left with, is a property that the bank already knows what they will take for it. All you do is swoop in there and snatch it up.

Now, with that being said it's getting a little harder to get the moon in transactions such as these. Sure, the lender's are motivated to get rid of the property, and will consider some pretty off the wall stuff, but currently when they have around 4 offers to pick from, all the extra stuff written into the contract will completely bypass the "i feel offended and angry about having to counter back your lowball" process and just go straight to filling out line 392! (that's where the seller conveys their rejection to the contract) The REO's are being priced so aggressively, there almost isn't a need to knock 20 grand off the price. It turns out you'll end up hamstringing yourself. In essence you will end up with a "strikeout" and not that "homerun." Swing cautiously, you could be full count with two outs, and there won't be another at bat in the game to produce. The bottom line is listen to yourself. Listen to your emotions, your needs, your timeline. Maybe it would not be so bad to offer full price with your concessions instead of 25 grand less with concessions if it means you get the house, right? On the other side of the coin, there are so many houses being put up everyday that your next at-bat will just be a new game.

Now for those terrible listing agents handling these REO's and Short Sales! Banks are thinking that just cause a brokerage is a RE/MAX office... OH they are a national chain, they know what they're doing. Well, do they realize that the majority of RE/MAX offices are franchises? Same goes with Keller Williams, Realty Executives, Century 21, etc. Hey, an agent is an agent, and their affiliation does not always mean that is the kind of agent they are. Banks and their REO processing don't always think this way. So you get These REO's going to sometimes small brokerages with a big name. HA! I had one listing agent *who was also the DESIGNATED BROKER* just flat out not submit my offer because he had another with the bank. Isn't it flat out a violation to not present an offer to your client. In this canse, the REO property was owned by the bank, so he was supposed to present my offer! well he didn't. The other big problem I have are listing agents who are not willing to get aggressive with the bank regarding short sales. If you have an offer, and they are taking their sweet time, you need to motivate them. Get in their face, Hound them everyday. Don't just send one email and leave one voice mail and wait. That doesn't help ANYONE!

Here is another good one, I had yet another offer I submitted on a short sale, and the listing agent did something good; THEY countered by the contract acceptance date! HEY, nice work! Except the agent didn't realize she was missing some key components. In the AAR standard purchase contract, Section 2a lines 50-53 it talks about Loan Contingency. If the buyer can not qualify for the loan, he is out of the contract. Sounds pretty standard right, so the BUYER has a CONTINGENCY to OBTAIN FINANCING. right? Well... in a short sale, the short sale addendum let's us know that the seller has the same contingency, but inverted; the SELLER has a CONTINGENCY to GET OUT OF THEIR FINANCING. So what does this mean? The proceedings of the contract have to move along just like a normal contract would! This means getting the seller's signature and accepting the offer CONTINGENT UPON the seller's getting lender approval. A lot of agents DO NOT do this, and what ends up happening is they give the buying side yet another get out of jail free card. Now let's say the agent gets the approval and present the buyer with a counter offer, what good is that counter if the buyer doesn't like it. They don't have to do anything, cause the original offer was not answered back by the contract acceptance date. so in essence is the listing agent helping out their clients by giving the buying side more freedom to send out other offers and pursue other properties. You bet they are. Ok back to this agent and her procedure. When she countered back she only gave me the addendums I did not have with the contract and a counter offer sheet. Well where the hell is the rest of the contract? The answer was the broker told them the procedure was to not submit back a signed contract until lender approval. Well what good did that do?! She didn't say in the counter offer "all terms to remain the same" So if I got my client to sign the counter offer, They would also be agreeing to any changes made in the purchase contract! Why would I let that happen, furthermore, ALL COUNTERS ARE TO INCLUDE FULL CONTRACTS!!! Even rejections are supposed to have the full contract with it, but it's becoming standard fare to just fax back the last page with line 392 filled out.

Now to tie up this loose end with REO properties being handled by underqualified people. there is a brokerage running around who will not even use their PHONE! they say to email all inquiries. So they deal ONLY with email. It comes in on their blackberry, and it's the most broken ridiculous form of english. It's like they are on the back of a motorcycle trying to respond to an email. It's pretty asenine. Anyway, you can tell my slight frustration with people cutting corners, and thinking they know what's best, even though it's in violation of regs, the law and is sometimes a flagrant disregard for their client's fiduciary.

Either way, thank you very much for reading this... AGAIN, give me some feedback!! those of you who have, I LOVE IT! bring some more, it will only help me get stronger... and remember...

THERE ARE NO FOOLISH QUESTIONS; IT IS ONLY FOOLISH TO NOT ASK QUESTIONS!

Jason Caballero
Dan Schwartz Realty, Inc.
Mobile: (520)250-6369
Office: (602)274-8322
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it