Now that My San Antonio TX Home for Sale is Under Contract Do I Still Pay the Mortgage
quick and easy answer is NO! In fact, it's pretty much the only answer unless there are other mitigating circumstances, (short sale for example).
I know I am on a roll of short sale posts, but this news couldn't wait. Many service members will be returning home from combat duty abroad and given the expected budget cuts and downsizing, there will be
many military home owners that will need to move and sell their current home.
According to an article by Karen Jowers in the Army Times, Big banks must offer relief to some military homeowners, a new program seems to be forthcoming to help those military home owners who have to move and sell because of military orders. With the housing economy today, military members are finding it difficult at best to sell their homes for the amount they bought them for and move on free and clear to their next duty station.
Some service members have been able to turn to such programs as HAP (Home Owner's Assistance Program), which is a program ran by the Department of Defense to help ease the burden of the military member having to sell a home, but unable to because of the down turn of the economy. The HAP had specific timelines that needed to be adhered to to be eligible for the program and was paid for by the DOD. Because of the exact timelines, there were those that were not able to qualify for this program, however still needed to sell their home.
Some members with a VA Loan could try for a type of military short sale called the VA Compromise sale. However, not every military member bought a home with that type of loan and still face the possibility of a short sale because of a mandatory move. If you don't know what a short sale is, it is the seller trying to sell their home for less than what they owe the lending institution.
Because of the Justice Department and the States Attorney General, service members may be able to get relief directly from their lending institutions, the loans have to be from Wells Fargo, Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America and Ally Financial.
Essentially, these banks must allow for a short sale of the home and they must issue a deficiency waiver which prevents the banks from coming back and demanding payment of the shortage. Additionally, these banks cannot report this short sale to the creditors as being delinquent if the service member was not in default before the short sale.
Although the guidelines for this new program haven't been outlined, according to a source for the Army Times the basic qualifications are these
- Troops must be on full time Active Duty
- The property must be the principal residence, or must have been purchased between July 1, 2006 and Dec 31st, 2008.
- PCS Orders must have been received on or after Oct 1st, 2010 and must require a relocation outside a 50 mile radius.
- The Short Sale must take place within 12 months of the relocation
How Do You Know if You Qualify
If you are a service member that is PCSing and you need to sell your home and you feel you may need a short sale, the first thing you should do is call your lender and see what assistance is available to you, (according to the Army Times, if your lender cannot help, call the Justice Department's Military Help Line at 800-896-7743). Calling a Realtor® that is familiar with working with military members and familiar with short sales is also going to be your best bet.
What you shouldn't do is give up and just leave as that could have further implications later. There are several programs that are available to assist you if you need to PCS and sell your home. Call your lender, and get with a local Realtor® who can help you determine whether you even need a short sale and if you do, guide you through the process.
Buying a short sale can be rewarding, however it can also be a long and frustrating process, especially if you don't understand what a short sale is and know what the overall process is. The very first thing that you must understand is 
that short sales are going to take a while to close, if they close at all. If you are
in the market to buy a home in San Antonio Texas quickly and be in that home in a short amount of time, then buying a short sale may not be for you. My advice would be to probably take them from your list if you need to be in a home in less than 45 days or so. However, if short sales are something you want to pursue, then having an educated short sale buyers agent by your side is bound to raise your success level in getting your offer for a short sale accepted by both the seller and the lender.
Alright, you have been searching high and low in the Greater San Antonio Texas area for the perfect home for sale for you and your family and you think you have found the one and you would like to place an offer on the home. Things that attracted you to this home were the size, location and the incredible price! Many times a short sale will be priced incredibly low for the size and location and you think that you have come upon the deal of a century. One of the first considerations that you need to be aware of is that short sales may be priced incredibly low to entice home buyers to put in an offer to start the short sale process. The price listed on the home may not be the price that you end up paying for at the closing table.
Why is this? Well, although the home is listed as a short sale, the actual process to begin approving the short sale will not truly begin until there is an offer on the table for a lender to approve. Meaning that once you think you have "found home" your Realtor® in San Antonio Texas should prepare a comparative market analysis for you to show you what the current market value of the home you want to purchase is approximately worth. If the home listed for sale is remarkably lower than that, you need to understand that offering full list price may not seal the deal for you.
This is the most confusing part to buyers on trying to buy a greater San Antonio Texas area short sale. Many times buyers think that buying a short sale or even buying a San Antonio Texas home for sale is like buying a car at Gunn Auto, "the price is the price" on the sticker. Now at Gunn, you cannot wheel and deal, because for them, the price is the price and that's it, (trust me, my husband tried and they don't budge!).
If you are not educated on the short sale process, this one fact will make the entire thing not worth pursuing because you are thinking you have found the take of the day, and by the time that offer makes it up to the lender and they counter with a price way higher than you initially thought, or disapprove the entire short sale, you have waited a long time for nothing and it can be extremely discouraging.
Once you receive that market analysis, we will sit down and discuss the offer strategy and put together an offer that will work best for you, the buyer. That may be to initially offer what the price is or it may be to offer higher and include closing costs. Either way, we will construct the offer that hopefully has the best chance of being accepted by both the seller and the lender, (or when it makes it up to the lender has a chance of being countered and the counter doesn't send you running). I know you are thinking, "why does it have to even go to the seller?" Remember that a short sale is not a foreclosure. The seller is the one selling the home and trying to sell it for less than what they owe to the lender.
The offer goes to the seller first and God willing, they have a San Antonio listing agent familiar with listing and selling short sales who can guide the seller through the process as well. The listing agent should guide that seller to accept the offer that has the best chance of being accepted by the lender . If the home was initially priced extremely below market price, we may be working with an unexperienced short sale agent. Again, with your Realtor®, looking at the comparative market analysis and the listing history will give you the background knowledge on the home and area and will give you an edge on what that offer needs to be to have the strongest chance of being accepted.
Once the offer gets accepted by the seller, the offer, along with all pertinent paperwork that the seller needs to provide will go up in a nice, neat package to the lender to either approve or disapprove the short sale. Dates for the option, inspection, appraisal and closing need to be realistic. This means that ordinarily, in a normal sale, you would go under option within the first few days and get your home inspection done and continue on towards the closing day where you become a home owner.
From the time that all paperwork is turned in to the lender to the time that you actually get a response, is probably the most frustrating to the buyer and many call their agent daily when they haven't heard anything for a while. Many buyers agents have lost clients because there is nothing we can tell you and buyers think that their agents are not representing them fully and have forgotten about them. This couldn't be farther from the truth. Unfortunately, there isn't much we can give you in the way of updates. Once the lender has the offer and the paperwork, it is up to them to start the ball rolling again and until they get to your particular package and offer, it's a waiting game.
So, let's recap a bit on buying a Greater San Antonio Texas short sale.
You may have been hearing the term called Short Sale in regards to selling a home or even buying one for quite a while and have been wondering what exactly it is. Well, to put it simply, a short sale is when the lender of a home loan decides that they will accept a lesser amount than what is due on the mortgage to allow a sale of a particular home to proceed. For example, if a home owner has a balance of $120,000, and market value in your area is now at $90,000 for your home size and type, they may be willing to accept that offer. There are several things you must do to qualify for a
short sale in San Antonio Texas, and for the sake of expediency, I will save that for another post sometime in the future. Why, because this post is about the VA Compromise Sale and I want to focus on how a VA Compromise Sale can truly help Soldiers, Marines, Sailors and Airmen if they may be facing foreclosure or a hardship.
A VA Compromise Sale in San Antonio Texas is the VAs answer or solution to the traditional short sale for those Military members who have bought a home with a VA loan. What VA does in a VA Compromise sale, if approved, is pay the lender the difference in the shortage amount. For example, if we use the same scenario we did above and the Soldier owes $120,000 on the mortgage and fair market value turns out to be $90,000, VA will come in and pay the $20,000 and the closing costs. To put it in the exact words from the Department of Veteran's Affairs,
How Does A Compromise Sale Work?
When a homeowner receives an offer based on current market value that is lower than the total amount of the loan payoff, the homeowner can ask VA to approve a Compromise Sale. VA will review the situation with the mortgage company and if approved, pay the difference between the mortgage balance and the proceeds of the sale.
Even though we call a VA Compromise Sale a "Military Short Sale", it isn't a short sale in the true sense of the word because the lender is going to get what the military member owes on the home. A VA compromise sale is not a get out of jail free card or a way out of a home because you made a mistake and don't want to be a home owner anymore. It also isn't automatically approved. You must qualify for the VA Compromise sale and it is much like going through the Short Sale process. VA has turned over the VA Compromise Sale program to specially trained VA loss mitigators at the lending institutions you have your mortgage at. Things required for to be considered for a VA Compromise Sale are,
First, if you have a hardship and have been missing mortgage payments and are in danger of getting foreclosed on, you need to call your lender and talk to them about your options. In some cases they may be able to do a loan modification program to reduce your payments or other like options. There are several programs that can help you. However, if you have a hardship and you really need to sell, (by the way, PCSing is now considered a hardship), the next thing (or first thing) you should do is get with a Realtor® in San Antonio Texas who is knowledgeable about the VA Compromise Sale and the Short Sale process.
There are many agents out there who do short sales, but are not aware that there is a program that can help those who have a VA loan. Short Sales and VA Compromise Sales can be quite complicated and you need a professional by your side to guide you through the process. I can help to talk to you about whether you are likely to qualify for a VA Compromise sale or not. The biggest thing is to make sure that number one, you don't try to do this yourself and number two, that you don't give up and go to foreclosure.
Although you may lose some of your VA eligibility doing a VA Compromise Sale, you have the ability to gain it back. If you get a VA foreclosure, it is my understanding that you will lose your VA eligibility forever. There is really no need for that to happen when we can prevent it.
A VA Compromise Sale is a great program that can really help a Military member in need. With the tough times of today's San Antonio Real Estate Market, selling a home has become difficult at best in some areas of the city. Although San Antonio hasn't felt the tragic pinch of other Real Estate markets, we have still seen a slight downturn of the market and homes have decreased in value. As you well know, military members have an unstable life and can move every couple of years. In ages past, military members were able to sell their homes and move on without any worries. Well, that simply isn't the truth for everyone these days.
If you are having issues and you truly need to sell your home and you think you may need a short sale, and you have a VA loan, a VA Compromise Sale may be just the answer you need. For more information on preventing foreclosure, you can go to the Department of Veteran Affairs or just give me a call. I can set up a no obligation consultation to see if a VA Compromise Sale can be your answer.
years old. Homes built in Georg Ranch are a mix of custom built and known builders such as Japhet. The community offers amenities such as a pool, tennis courts, park and playground area and a sports court. Currently there are 7 homes available for sale in Georg Ranch. One and two story homes are available and vary in size from 3631 square feet to as large as 4573 square feet. Prices for available homes for sale in the Georg Ranch neighborhood range from $429,000 to $550,000. All homes in Georg Ranch sit on at least 3/4 of an acre. Children who live in Georg Ranch attend Comal County Independent School District. Georg Ranch is convenient to shopping and is close to Military Bases such as Randolph Air Force Base and FT Sam Houston (Joint Base San Antonio), TX. You can get to Georg Ranch by traveling on I-35 and exiting off on FM 3009 towards Garden Ridge, you will find it on your left hand side. If you are interested in buying or selling a home in the Georg Ranch Neighborhood or any area in Garden Ridge Texas, feel free to give me, Brenda Mullen your San Antonio Texas area Realtor® a call so I can show you what I can do for you!
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Bexar and Guadalupe County Real Estate blog by Brenda Mullen, Real Estate Agent with Smart Moves Realty. Updates and information about Real Estate in Schertz TX-Cibolo TX-Selma, TX-Universal City TX
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