Phillips Ranch, CA

May this new year adorn your life with many beautiful things and sweet memories to cherish forever.

And care of those whom the heart holds close, along with abundant joys and happiness, for you and your family.

Wishing you life's best this New Year.

There are 4 stages in a short sale transaction:

1. Offer solicitation stage I
This stage is controlled by the seller and time frame shall be as short as possible. A good agent shall be able to help you price your house to get offers within a week the house is listed on the market.

2. Lender approval stage
This stage is controlled by the lenders and can be anywhere from 2 months to 6 months depending on who the lenders are and how many lenders (liens) are on the property.

3. Offer solicitation stage II
By the time we get the short sale approvals from the lenders few months after the house was initially listed, most likely we lost all the offers to purchase the house. We will need to start the offer solicitation stage again with the new price that is approved by the lenders. Most offers come in at this stage will be substantially below the lender's approval price so we may need to counter offer back and forth between the buyers and the lenders. The counter offer process may take up to couple of months since lender's approval process is very slow.

4. Escrow Stage
Once an offer is accepted by the seller and approved by the lenders, we open escrow. This will take approximately one month.

As you can see, sellers need to price the house aggressively in order to receive offers within first week the house is on the market in order to minimize time required on selling the property.

I am an experienced short sale agent who can help you negotiate non-deficient judgments on your liens whenever possible to minimize damage to your credit and sell your house successfully. Please call Caroline Tsou at (626) 922-8408 if you are interested in short selling your property.

I had a lot of buyers asking me about the difference between purchasing bank owned and short sales properties. Below is a quick comparison chart:

Since most short sale purchase takes a long time to realize, the transaction can easily fall apart due to seller's change in financial situation or buyer finding another home.

For buyers who have the time and patient to wait for a short sale approval from the lenders, they will most likely end up with a property in excellent condition at a price 10% below bank owned properties and less buyers fighting over the same house.

Being in the real estate business, I heard a lot of horror stories recently about scammers taking advantage of distressed property owners.

Exercise common judgment like "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is." Be especially alert, if you need to put money up front or sign over your house deed. You can also check with Better Business Bureau to make sure they are legitimate business and not scams.

Here are some free and honest resources to assist distressed owners:

1. Home Ownership Preservation (HOPE) program. They have counselor to help you writing a hardship letter and assist you in preparing loan modification documentation free of charge.

HOPE (888) 995-4673
http://www.995hope.org

2. You can also contact HUD. Here's the contact info:

HUD (800) 569-4287
http://www.hud.gov/foreclosure/index.cfm
(Guide To Avoid Foreclosures)

3. Talk to your lenders (1st, 2nd and 3rd). They have the first hand solutions to help you solving your financial problem through either loan modification or recommend a short sale depending on your current situation.

Again, please beware of the loan modification scams or other similar scams that require upfront fee or signing over your house deed!!!

It is always very challenging to rent a house that has red, orange, yellow, green, blue, lilac or pink wall or carpet. It will take an extra one to two months to rent those properties and most likely at the lower than market rate.

Here's the reason why. Let say if a rental has red wall. Since about 50% of prospected renters will like it and the other cannot stand it, the color will eliminate 50% of the suitable renters. Thus doubling the length of time in securing a qualified renter. Also, the strong color of the property will probably post a challenge to match tenant's furniture's color scheme.

The same rule applies to wallpapers. Some people will like it and the others won't. Often times, even if they like rest of the house, most renters will just move on to the next suitable rental since there are so many to choose from in today's market. Landlord has only one shot to show the house right and it is important the house is in rent ready shape.

When replacing flooring or painting new paint, it is best to use neutral tone like beige or coffee since they are the most widely accepted color by renters. As regarding to wallpaper, it is best to remove it and replace it with neutral tone paint.

Landlords of properties with funky color decor will suffer more financial loss through rental vacancy since it takes twice longer to secure a suitable renter. Therefore, it is to the landlord's best interest to get rid of the wall paper and strong color decor and replace it with neutral tone decor to get the house rented promptly.