Short Sale Woes

I'm sure that in this climate of rampant foreclosures that most every agent is dealing with at least one, and maybe more, foreclosure or short sale. I never had before any of this started but I certainly am now and I have learned alot in short succession. I approached my first short sale as I would any other listing and not only did I not make any money but I lost money and part of my pride went along with it.

Let's start from the top and work our way down the never ending spiral that became my first dealings with bank-owned properties and short sales. Let me first give you a little background about the area in which my first short sale was located. I live and work in Columbia, SC. It's a wonderful place to reside and being our state capital there is always a lot going on, both in entertainment and business. The Northeast section of town was at one time THE place to be. Hoards of people flocked to the northeast to get away from downtown and to make it to one of the best examples of the term "urban sprawl" that I have ever seen. Lots of brand new shopping centers, restaurants and schools to acomodate the throngs of pilgrims. The builders, developers and the banks made it easy for them to get there with tons of loans, incentives and upgrades to make everyone happy to be in their new Shangri-La. That was about ten or fifteen years ago. Cut to today.

You can drive through one of the humongous, gluttonous neighborhoods of the northeast and you will still see the obligatory jet-ski in the driveway, parked next to the new SUV with the wife's Lexus on the other side. Stay-at-home mothers pushing babies, lawn mowers mowing and all that great stuff. Not nearly as much as you used to because a good quarter of the residents are now gone, living in a rented apartment somewhere. What you do see more of are the obviously vacant, grass not mowed, empty windows, bank sign in the yard, leaning sideways because no one has been there in forever, houses that are the casualties of the lending downfall.

In that northeastern section of town you can definitely see a snapshot of the condition the housing industry is in right now. In other parts of our fine city it is not so 'in your face' as there because there hasn't been such a land boom as there was in the northeast. Just the mention of the word "northeast" around her will cause most agents eyes to roll to the northeast in disgust and lack of willingness to have anything to do with that section of town.

I recently was driving some buyer clients around and one of the homes they wanted to see was in the northeast. No indication of anything awry from the selling agents notes in the MLS or anything like that but when we stepped over the threshold of that house and into the foyer I was shocked, horrified and embarrassed to see the condition of the inside of this house. There had to be, and I am not exagerrating by any stretch of the imagination, at least hundreds if not thousands of dead bugs, mostly roaches, some still kicking, all over that house. I was surprised my clients even walked inside. I WAS SURPRISED I WALKED INSIDE! When I called the selling agent to inform and scold her for the condition of the home, she told me the story of how it was a bank-owned home and about how she couldn't get the bank to do anything about it, therefore making it impossible for her to sell the thing. I wound up feeling sorry for her because I understood her plight. She spun a tale of how the short sale agent had lost the listing to foreclosure after spending themselves blind trying to market the home in order to be able to sell it within the allotted 30 day window given by the bank. She told me about how she was contacted by the lender to sell the home but had been unsuccessful even after putting in several full price offers, due to the erratic and completely unexplainable actions of the bank not to mention their unwillingness to keep the property in sellable condition. All of this of course with a smaller commission of course; courtesy of bank guidelines.

At the end of this particular blog I realize that it became not so much about my experiences with foreclosures but about the foreclosure market as a whole. It is something I'm sure we can all relate to if you decide to venture in this territory. Now that I think about it, this was very much about my experience with foreclosures. It was JUST LIKE my first experience.