Issaquah, WA

Are you living through a short sale? Representing the Seller? It takes a ton of patience and skill to weather the endurance race mistakenly called a "short sale". There is nothing short about it.

My experience began with a listing that was inherited from a agent who had promised a Seller to perform a discounted commission - sale. The house was beautiful in a rural neighborhood and at the time it was worth the $700,000 it was listed for. The Seller was upside down with a negative amortization loan and no job. It was either sell the house or give it back in a foreclosure. Desparate moves resulted in a major price discount to create offers. The price reduction resulted in a solid offer for $655,000 and began the path to the short sale.

My inexperience in this situation began the frustrating process of dealing with two lenders and negotiate with them to accept an offer where neither lender would get back the principal of their loan. Calling the Loss Mitigation Department of a large lender can be a difficult process. Most often the 800 number goes to a call center and is answered by the next person in line. Rarely will you speak to the same person twice. It is very important that you have the client information documents in order before you get started in this process. Financial records, listing agreement, hardship letter, HUD-1 and other items are necessary before they will even begin talking to you about the process.

When you fax information to the Loss Mitigation Department it goes into a computer and is entered into a file without being managed by a real person. In my experience it took at least 4 attempts to fax the information before they acknowledged receipt. It took about two months of faxing and calling before I was able to speak with the person who would be dealing with me to negotiate this transaction. If you have two lenders you will need to deal with two companies in the same process.

Half way through the transaction I was encouraged to hand the process over to a local law firm who specialized in escrow and short sale negotiation. I would like to tell you that this was a superior process but sadly it was not. The communication between the law form and my client was difficult at best. If the law firm worked directly with the client and negotiated on their behalf it might have been easier but in my case I was in the middle and my client of 12 months expected me to be their advocate during the process.

It has been five months since we received our offer and thankfully the buyer was able to delay their closing and allow the process to work its way through the system and eventually close. We are not yet closed but the end is in sight. I recommend to any agent wanting to get involved in a short sale to educate themselves prior to jumping into the process. Take classes, read information about the subject and seek experienced support or make mistakes and jeopardize your sale and commission.

A local organization called Seattle Tilth is having a workshop this coming weekend in Issaquah to teach the public how to raise and keep chickens, they call it "City Chickens". I love the idea of it because then you can have fresh eggs, composting material for your gardens, and chickens naturally want to eat all manner of bugs and slugs. Thankfully, the majority of bugs they eat (and slugs) are non-beneficial to a garden so it's a great way to organically treat a yard for pests. For years I have grown organic vegetables so when I saw that most municipalities will allow up to 3 chickens, even in the city, I thought this could be a great way to expand that practice. Plus, Michael eats eggs all the time for breakfast. I loved the idea of having more local food sources for us and our neighbors to share.

I'm thinking about going to the workshop because I have a desire to keep chickens but I'm not sure I can convince my partner, Michael, that it will be a reasonable thing to do. The first time I brought it up we had 4 pets, and now we have 7, no thanks to a guy we helped out by fostering his cat whom he gave to us pregnant without telling us. So, now we have 3 dogs and 4 cats. The cats are all indoor animals so they won't attack chickens but our neighbors do have roaming outside cats so I'd be more leery of them and would need to make sure a coop was well closed up at night and also set up to keep other critters at bay during the daytime.

Be sure before buying any chickens for yourself that you check with your local city ordinances about whether chickens are allowed, and how many, in your area. Plus, for those of you who live in HOA developments, you'll want to make sure there aren't restrictions in your covenants.

Check out Seattle Tilth's website for many other gardening classes!

Man, it is tough out there...I just closed the hardest transaction (listing) ever. I had a willing and motivated seller and we dropped the sale price by $100K to make the market. Bang! Two offers in as many days. We snagged a qualified Buyer and set for a 30 day close.

Then came the inspection. Sometimes the inspection just has to be the defining moment in the sale Water in the crawl space and mice in the attic...ridge caps on the roof and a difficult Jacuzzi tub. Sounds simple enough, but not so fast. How about those failed window seals (4) and that defective water heater?

Finally, we defined what would be perfection in this home and it looks like $7K would cover it. The Seller says "we will do it all". (whataguy). The handyman fills the Jacuzzi to check it out and when he is done he walks away and leaves water in the tub. Bad idea. The next day there is water dripping from the kitchen ceiling below...the Jacuzzi leaks. $1500 and two plumber trips later we have to remove tile from the tub surround and there it is; a failed glue joint on the tub. No problem, rush everything here and we can get it done by closing. We never counted on 16 inches of snow, closed roads and a Christmas/New Years holiday.

Perserverance and pressure resulted in everything to be done to the Buyer's satisfaction (inspection #3) and we finally closed, sans the windows and the tile is still not here for the Jacuzzi. It seems the house was 10 years old and there was no matching tile to be found without a special order. Murphy's Law was at work.

Oh, I have never met my Seller (client) he moved away in January of 08 and I have had the pleasure of listing, fixing and selling the house.

We finally closed. Who said we don't earn our commission?

During the month of December 2008, REO in King County sold for an average 86.95% of the banks foreclosure amount or previous loan amount.

Which banks closed with the biggest losses on individual properties?

Here's the top 5 "Biggest Losers" of the month.

#1. Jp Morgan Chase Bank Na (A WAMU asset) @ ..................................39.33%
#2. Saxon Mortgage Services Inc sold a home for ..................................56.31%
#3. Lasalle Bank National Association (A First Franklin asst) @ .................61.64%
#4. Citigroup Mtg Series 2006-Amc1 (An Argent Mortgage asset) @ .........66.01%
#5. First Franklin Mtg 2007-1 sold one of their homes for ........................66.83%

Who were the biggest sellers of the month?

#1. Countrywide with ...............8 units, ...................average sale price @ 84.42%
#2. Deutsche Bank with ...........7 units ................................................. 82.99%
#3. US Bank with.....................6 units ................................................. 93.28%
#4. WAMU (via Chase, etc) ......6 units ..................................................81.34%
#5. First Franklin with ..............5 units ..................................................84.25%

This information about Seattle area bank owned homes for sale was compiled by several sources, deemed reliable, but is not guaranteed by any stretch. Just my own personal research.

I hope it may help you a little when considering making an offer on a bank owned home. Be it help with fear of "coming in to low", sniffing out the banks bottom line or increasing your odds of getting the deal by beating their average. It's not much, but a little insight. Consider it a dart in your quiver of arrows.

Congratulations to those buyers/agents who secured those top 5 deals, trimming 20% more fat then the average bank owned property sale price. The one bank owned Property I closed in December was at 76.78% of the foreclosure amount. Not bad, but I still came in 19th place for the month. The house was in a premier Newcastle neighborhood though, so there's gotta be something to be said for that, right?

Welcome to 2009.

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