Sarasota Florida Foreclosures

I hope everyone saw that my last post was entirely for fun. I would never advocate taking a bulldozer to expired listings. Hey, my own home recently expired. It was all meant as sarcasm since the so-called experts were saying that might be the only way to clear out the inventory.

I can only speak for what I see in the Sarasota Florida area. The foreclosures seem to be very steady, however, there is a moratorium in place by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. There is also a lot of talk about the pending legislation that would allow bankruptcy judges to rewrite the terms of a loan and reduce the principal. The questions is, how will this help the market? Will it drive more and more people to seek the bankruptcy path to try to get the judge to side in their favor? Or will it finally get lenders to understand that a short sale is better for them than a foreclosures? Hopefully, it is the latter.

Once the lenders realize that it is to their benefit to try to work something out with the homeowner, the first thing that should happen is for them to shorten the review period. I have always said that lenders are shooting themselves in the foot by not reviewing short sales in a reasonable amount of time. With the inventory at an all time high, what buyer would be dumb enough to wait 6-8 weeks for a response on a short sale, when they can go after a foreclosure and get a quick answer? The lenders are driving people to foreclosure by their ignorance of this issue. Or am I being too harsh on the lender? Maybe if they can get their heads out of their butts they will see what is going on.

But lets get back to the bankruptcy judges being able to re-write loans. This should scare the living poop out of the lenders. Imagine if there is a short sale that the lender has been playing hard ball with, and then a foreclosure judge learns that the lender rejected an offer that was reasonable given the market? Or that the lender had an offer in place, and took so long that the buyer walked away? The judge will have a field day with these. I think this will reduce the number of Sarasota Florida Foreclosures by forcing lenders to take a closer look at things and to get off their thrones. You will start seeing more short sales being approved and the review time will be weeks and not months.

So things are looking brighter and better for 2009. What a GREAT market we are in!!!!

Jose Lopez
I specialize in Sarasota Florida Foreclosures and Bradenton Foreclosures