Minnesota Short Sale Expert

If you’re considering buying a home, are short sales an option for you?

If you’re wanting to purchase your next home at a great deal and have more homes to pick from, a short sale shouldn’t be ignored. With the housing crisis destroying seller equity in most areas of the country, countless homeowners were left owing more than their property is worth. For a seller that needs to move or cannot afford the property, most sellers face the tough choice of allowing the home to go to foreclose and return to the lender (REO) or work with a local Realtor in selling their home in a Short Sale.

A short sale involves the bank agreeing to allow the seller to sell and transfer title to the property for less than the amount owed. There are reasons sellers and banks can benefit selling this way. The bank has an interested party that is in the property maintaining it during the process, possibly still making payments and the bank avoids the expensive foreclosure costs. Homeowner’s benefit doing short sales by avoiding the embaressment of a foreclosure, possibly staying in the house during the process, negotiating move timing and the short sale’s effect on the homeowner’s credit rating is not as tragic as a foreclosure.

For a buyer considering short sale properties there are things to consider: there is no guarantee the bank will approve the sale ( most banks are becoming more agreeable ), the bank could come back and counter for more money, the seller could lose their home during the short sale transaction and the transaction time for most short sale transactions are longer than the traditional real estate transaction.

The government seems to roll out new programs almost daily in an effort to ease the housing crisis effects on the banks and homeowners. The governments demands on the banks to streamline the process and respond sooner to loan modifications and short sale requests seems to be working in 2010.

Whether we like the short sale housing scenario or not, short sales are a driving force in the market and don’t appear to be going away any time soon.