Real estate short sales are not a new concept and you will hear of them more and more in our presently receding economy. Many experienced real estate investors have been practicing real estate short sales for years. For homeowners, it may be a new concept but is a very useful and interesting one.
There are no need for real estate short sales if homeowners do not have mortgages larger than the worth of their homes. You can say that real estate short sales are invented to help homeowners get out of the upside down mortgage situations. When a homeowner is upside down, he or she owes the bank more than he or she can sell the home for. If a home is worth only $100,000, for example, then the homeowner cannot afford to pay off a mortgage that is more than that amount. He or she is basically “upside down.”
The problem with an upside down mortgage is that even if the homeowner is willing to sell his or her home to pay off the bank, it is still not enough to be free from the debt. The proceed is not enough to pay off the mortgage and the bank will come after the homeowner for the difference. This causes major financial disaster for the homeowner.
Fortunately there are people, such as private investors, willing to do real estate short sales with the banks. Real estate short sales are homeowners’ only hope when the home is upside down. How real estate short sales work is that say Bob owes his bank $210,000 but his home is only worth $160,000. Then a real estate short sale is done for Bob and the bank accepts it. This frees Bob from all of his mortgage obligation. He wouldn’t have to pay the whole $210,000.
The downside is that Bob cannot stay in his home. With real estate short sales, homes must be sold to third parties. This is because if Bob’s bank knows that Bob can only afford to pay what the home is worth, then the bank will not be lenient about the extra $50,000. Besides, what’s to stop people from pretending that they cannot afford the mortgage payments to deceive the bank if it were that easy to do.
In order for real estate short sales to be accepted, there must be third party buyers who convince the lenders that the homeowners cannot afford to pay what they owe. This often includes proving that the homeowners are in bad financial situations such as loss of jobs, medical bills, and divorces. Many convincing letters will need to be sent to the banks.
Real estate short sales are not always successful. Sometimes, real estate short sales are not accepted by the banks. This may be because the buyers and the homeowners have not given enough proof that the situations are bad enough. Sometimes, the banks feel that they can do better auctioning the homes off in foreclosure sales instead of going ahead with the real estate short sales.
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