How to save money - Hire the best short sale listing agent you can find

Homeowners, Foreclosure prevention is serious business; please treat it that way. In short sales, because the borrowers are suffering some sort of financial hardship, the lender has to pay for the usual closing related costs, including broker fees. However, this does not mean you, the borrower, should simply hand over the responsibilities to any agent, desperate for business. There are repercussions if the short sale cannot be completed and you are faced with foreclosure; and you may end up spending money needlessly.

I was speaking to a fellow agent yesterday who told me about a horror situation with a bad agent doing a short sale for a client of hers. This particularly inadequate agent told the borrowers they had to vacate the house prior to the listing the house, so these borrowers had to move out to an apartment, believing that was required to do a short sale. They won’t know how long this short sale will take to be approved, so they are now paying rent for an unspecified amount of time into the future. This was a completely unnecessary move; and these borrowers did not have the financial wherewithal to make this move.

These borrowers, by not checking into the agent’s background and experience ended up having to spend thousands of dollars they did not have to spend. A competent agent would not advise the borrower to move out before listing house, especially in this circumstance when there was nothing warranting such a move.

Ask for references. You don’t have to pay for the agent’s fee, so why would you not get the most experienced and qualified representation you can find out there? This is a no brainer. If an agent is good, his clients will vouch for him/her; conversely true if the agent is bad.