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Does short-sale cost my anything?

Posted on: 01st May, 2009 06:01 pm
I'm thinking about short-sellinng my house. A realtor said he will do it for $1500 and will discount me $750 (so i pay $750). Is this a fair market price?

My understanding about short-sale is if started a short-sale, I will have to keep paying my mortgage as well as HOA fee until someone buy my home. Am I right?
Hi,

Before you agree to a short sale, here's something to note: over 80% of homeowners fail when it comes to negotiating with their lenders. However, the Loan Modification Department has a success rate of over 90% in terms of bank negotiations.

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Posted on: 02nd May, 2009 12:43 am
Loan Modification only works for people who still has a job, right?
Posted on: 03rd May, 2009 11:41 pm
Hi

As far as I'm aware of, the fees for the realtor should not be more than 2-3% of the sale price. You will have to make the mortgage payments and HOA fees until the house is short sold, because you are the owner of the house till the title is transferred to someone else. The loan modification is actually a modified repayment plan. The lender would not modify your loan unless they are certain that you'll be able to make payments under the modified plan. So, if you don't have a job you have little chance of having your loan modified by your lender.
Posted on: 04th May, 2009 04:18 am
I got confused when my realtor told me to stop payment to get ready for the short-sale while most people said I want to keep payment going. unfortunately, I'm not using this realtor anymore so i cannot find out the answer from him.

About the fee, I thought realtor suppose to charge the lender %, not the home owner. I searched online and found realtor doesn't charge home owner any fee for short-sale. I'm confused.
Posted on: 04th May, 2009 09:32 am
from may 1 to may 4 you are not using the same realtor any more, so you can't get any information? that's odd to me, but that's ok.

realtors take their fees from the sales prices of homes, i.e. the seller's proceeds.
Posted on: 04th May, 2009 10:17 am
gmakerley, if you are curious, i will explain. my old realtor who supposed to help my wife get a new home and short-sale my home for me. he was the old who told me to stop payment. He had his assistant helping me to look for home and she was very pushy, we went 2 trips and she asked me for make an offer or she wouldn't take us for another trip, and mentioned the "time is money" BS... that pisses us off very bad (we haven't see a home we like yet). so I fired her but then we still need to short-sale my home, so i asked my realtor to just simply help us short-selling... he said they updated the fee and can no longer short sale for free but will charge me $1500. This is BS, i think he just want to make up the gas/time. Now I'm on my own looking for a realtor to short sale but I was told that I had to keep my payment... unfortunately I'm not able (dont want to) ask that dump realtor. i hope that explain the story.
Posted on: 04th May, 2009 08:34 pm
i get it now. there's no question that agents driving around from house to house are spending their time and money on you, but that's one of the built-in costs of doing business. if you were unlikely to qualify for a purchase, that's one thing, but it sounds like you're a reasonable candidate for a purchase. two trips - unless she drove hundreds of miles - ought not to be an issue.

good idea, i'm sure, to switch agents. i'm not quite sure i get the "free" short sale idea. you mean the agent was going to take no commission at all from the sale initially? if that's true, then he made a bad deal with you. that's his own fault.
Posted on: 05th May, 2009 06:59 am
The houses we looked at are only 5 miles between each others, we looked at total 7 homes in the 2 saturday trip. She is new to real estate market and I know she lives 40 miles away from these houses we looked at but hey, i didn't assign her to help me... I couldn't take her attitude anymore.

My old agent said he updated the fee meaning: before be charge only sale commission from the bank VS now he will charge bank AND a fee from me. I just curious if this is normal or if he try to rip me off because I fired his pushy realtor assistant.

My payment is due tomorrow and I don't know if I should stop or keep the payment in order to short-sale.
Posted on: 05th May, 2009 11:03 am
Hi

You have taken the right decision by switching over to another realtor. If you're not satisfied with the way he/she works it's better to look for someone else who you're comfortable to work with. As far as the payments are concerned, in my opinion you ought to pay them till the house is sold because the short sale is no doubt going to affect your credit score, and now on top of that if you have missed payments as well, it is going to damage your credit even further.
Posted on: 06th May, 2009 04:17 am
thanks for everyone's input. I finally talked to a short sale realtor that could answer all my question. She said, some realtor do charge fee to short sale, some don't (they don't). She in-directly suggest us to stop payment asap so the lender will know we are serious and will be more motivated to let us short sale. Our lender is Countrywide (now owned by Bank of America) and she said they take the longest time to process meaning we could simply stay at our home without payment for 6 months to a year. That is great news for us.
Posted on: 06th May, 2009 01:36 pm
Hi $,

It is good to hear that finally you have got a short sale realtor who is able to provide you with satisfying answers to your queries and you are also comfortable working with her. :)

It is right that unless you stop making the payments, the lenders do not consider your request for short sale seriously and that is the reason why the realtor has indirectly suggested you to stop payment. But you should also keep in mind that missed payments for 6 months or so are going to affect your credit negatively and can pose a problem to your chances of qualifying for a new mortgage.
Posted on: 09th May, 2009 01:28 am
i can't say i am convinced that ceasing payments is the correct way to go. in these times, it ought not take that to convince a lender that the value of a home has declined and that the balance outstanding on a mortgage far exceeds value. that's the classic case for short sale, of course; and providing information to the servicer about that ought to do the trick.

obviously, there must be compelling reasons for the short sale - not just that value has declined. but a "reasonable" lender should be able to weed through the information and get to the meat of the issue.

i suppose there aren't a whole lot of "reasonable" lenders out there - in these situations, that is.
Posted on: 09th May, 2009 06:13 am
sigh... I bought my home at 240k 4 yrs ago with a 5/1 arm. I planned to refin around the end of last year but the value started to drop so I wasn't able to refin, at that time I still have my job. Then i lost my job in Jan 09, my house value started to drop more and reached $130-140k. I'm going down financially over these few months and I know after the 5th years (5/1 arm), it will go worse. My wife still has a job so we can afford a cheap condo. that's why we started this... I have no choice at all.
Posted on: 10th May, 2009 10:23 am
hi guest,

a loan modification would have been a better option for you. but as you have no job, the lender might not be willing to modify your loan. but is your wife on the mortgage as a co-borrower? if she is on the loan, is it not possible for her to refinance the loan in her name alone to a lower interest rate, using her income (since she has a job)?

thanks,

jerry
Posted on: 11th May, 2009 02:26 am
i understand your plight $167...don't know where you are located, but it sounds like you're in one of those most depressed areas. i can't say as i have any additional advice that might help at this time.
Posted on: 11th May, 2009 08:40 am
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