May 09, 2011 by MichaelS.Dunn.

This is just a quick note for anyone that is considering a short sale:

Recently in my business, I have noticed a dramatic shift in the attitudes and effectiveness of banks/mortgage lenders when presented with an offer for a short sale on a home. 18 month ago, when i really started doing these, it was nearly impossible to get anyone at the banks to even talk to me. Then, when I was able to speak to someone, they frequently did not know and did not care what it was that i was proposing. I would talk to their supervisors and be begrudgingly talked at, which primarily amounted to a list of demands that were to be met, with absolutely no regard for ethics, etiquette or even common business sense.

I’m happy to report that times have changed.

Now, not only do the major home lenders have entire departments set up just for handling short sales, but they actually seem happy to talk us and show a sense of understanding when faced with the choice between accepting a short sale and risking the extra time money and exposure on taking the home through the foreclosure process and putting it back on the market  for sale.

Here’s a few examples:

1. A short sale with two loans, one with Chase and the other with GMAC was approved in a friendly, ethical manner in two weeks from the time that the offer was received.The loss that was taken by the Chase was around $75,000 and GMAC ate about $50,000.

Sellers: Lost everything that they had put into the house(about $52,000) but were able to walk away without any further obligation, responsibility or financial liability AND were given $3,000 as an incentive for completing the short sale and not just walking away from the home.

Buyers: Total transaction time was about 7 weeks. Got into the home of their dreams with the lowest priced home in the neighborhood!

2. Another Chase short sale, this one with an investor owner and two loans. (which are usually the toughest short sales to get approved.) After one buyer who bailed out after waiting for 1 month for approval we got a another offer. This one was approved after two weeks and there were also incentives offered to the Seller for completing the short sale. Chase apparently is randomly selecting particular short sale borrowers to receive seller incentives for leaving the home in good condition and maintaining the utilities, etc until closing. This approval was absolutely hassle free and actually required quite a bit less paperwork and documentation than most. Way to go Chase!

Seller: Got out without any further liability. Received $20,000.

Buyer: Once again got the home of their dreams and paid less than anyone else in the neighborhood.

3. A number of large lenders have gotten on board with equator which, love it or hate it, is a very organized and efficient software for processing the short sales and all of the documents that go with it. This is just another sign that lenders are wanting to streamline their systems to make the short sale process work.

Seller: More likely to have a successful sale, less time spent dumping $ into a bottomless pit.

Buyer: Less time spent wondering if the purchase will actually happen, less stress, better deals.

The point of all of these examples is just to let you know that many of the horror stories that you may have heard in the past (yes, some of them were probably from me) are likely to be just that: stories from the past. Lenders are starting to make some sense in their attitudes about short sales and will at least consider a short sale as an alternative.

What this means for you if you are considering buying a short sale is less uncertainty, time and hassel as you are trying to purchase what is likely to be a very good deal.

What this means for you if you need to sell and owe more than the home is worth is that there are options and talking to a realtor and/or your lender is a great way to explore whether a short sale is the best option for you. You are not alone and the process is much less dysfunctional than it was 18 months ago. Lenders do not want to take your home, they just want to minimize their loss. A short sale may be the best way to do that and free you from having a burden you cannot bear for years into the future.

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Dec 23, 2010 by MichaelS.Dunn.

Just when I was thinking that maybe, just maybe, I could start trusting the big lenders…they snuck up behind me and bit me in the ass.

I thought that the major real estate lenders out there, when they so graciously agreed to follow the HAFA program guidelines were doing the right thing. Despite the fact that their participation was a contingent of the massive amounts of TARP funds that they received from You, Me and every other tax payer; it still seemed like a step in the right direction.

For those who do not know what the HAFA program is, which is likely to be everyone that is not as much of a geek about it as I am, it stands for the Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives. It is a Government sponsored program to assist home owners who have a legitimate financial hardship and are facing a possible foreclosure. It is essentially a series of guidelines that lenders are supposed to follow to streamline the short sale process and protect the borrowers from liability after the sale.

The basic provisions look like this:

HAFA Provisions

• Complements HAMP by providing a viable alternative for borrowers (the current homeowners) who are HAMP eligible but nevertheless unable to keep their home.
• Uses borrower financial and hardship information already collected in connection with consideration of a loan modification.
• Allows borrowers to receive pre-approved short sales terms before listing the property (including the minimum acceptable net proceeds).
• Requires borrowers to be fully released from future liability for the first mortgage debt (no cash contribution, promissory note, or deficiency judgment is allowed).
• Uses standard processes, documents, and time-frames/deadlines.
• Provides the following financial incentives:
  • $3,000 for borrower relocation assistance;
  • $1,500 for servicers to cover administrative and processing costs;
  • Up to $2,000 for investors who allow a total of up to $6,000 in short sale proceeds to be distributed to subordinate lien holders, on a one-for-three matching basis.
• Requires all servicers participating in HAMP to implement HAFA in accordance with their own written policy, consistent with investor guidelines. The policy may include factors such as the severity of the potential loss, local markets, timing of pending foreclosure actions, and borrower motivation and cooperation.

Sounds great right? I mean for anyone out there that has truly struggled to keep their home, lost a job, or otherwise suffered from a depressed economy (Which was substantially caused by these very same lenders) this provides them an opportunity to get out from under a burden that they can no longer afford without having to worry about having a foreclosure or a possible deficiency judgement haunting them for the next 7 years.

Well that was the way it was supposed to work. But just like the vast majority of people who tried, sometimes over and over again, to have their loans modified through the HAMP program we have learned that this program isn’t quite that easy to get into.

The problem has to do with that last provision in the list above, and one other piece of fine print in the HAFA guidelines that they don’t like to advertise much which says that if a lender is already considering a traditional short sale (one without any of the HAFA protections or guidelines) on a particular property, then that property no longer qualifies for HAFA!

To clarify, this means that if the lender has already received an offer for a short sale for their approval, then that property no longer qualifies for HAFA. This leads us to the sneaky part.

I have found that most of the major lenders will not even talk about a short sale UNTILthey have received an offer! In fact that is their policy. So here’s how the typical hardship situation goes for most HAMP and HAFA qualified home owners:

1. They realize that they cannot afford their mortgage payments

2. They call the lender to try to do a loan modification

3. They spend 6 - 12 months banging their head against a wall while submitting hundreds of pages of documents and financial information to their lender.

4. They get denied for the modification based on investor guidelines that I don’t even understand, despite the fact that they meet every single one of the qualifications set up by the HAMP program.

5. Because they have spent 6-12 months trying to negotiate better terms with their lender, they are now facing foreclosure.

6. They talk to a good realtor, put the home on the market and get an offer.

7. The home owner or their realtor submit the offer to the lender for approval and following the recommendations of the HAFA program, they call the lender to discuss how to get involved with the HAFA program.

8. They are told that this short sale does not qualify for HAFA.

Why? Well that’s the complicated part, but when you get down to it, it’s just like everything else these mega corporations do…it’s all because of the money.

If our home owner happens to have a second loan on their house, the maximum amount payable under the HAFA guidelines to that second lien holder is $6000. That makes things much easier for getting the short sales done, but if the second lien holder happens to be the same as the primary lender, do you really think that they want to take only $6000 to pay off a loan that could be $50,000 or more?

Because of the loop holes mentioned above, lenders have figured out a way to get around HAFA. Their policies are to not discuss short sales until they have an offer, and then once they do have an offer, you are no longer qualified for HAFA and the second lien holder is free to go after you for any deficiency that is not paid in full, or they ask for a promissory note so that you still have a loan that you cannot afford to pay, even though you no longer have a house to go with it.

The way to solve this is to put it in writing - BEFORE submitting an offer for short sale. Write up a letter to the lender stating that you wish to participate in the HAFA program. Once the lender has confirmed that they received that letter, you can go forward with submitting the offer for approval. This still doesn’t guarantee that you will qualify for HAFA, but at least it forces the lenders to consider you for it, and they will then have to have a legitimate reason if they do deny your participation in HAFA. (You can still try to do the a traditional short sale.)

Too bad that what appeared to be the banks stepping in the right direction now looks more like a thief tip-toeing around your back door.

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Aug 26, 2010 by MichaelS.Dunn.

The following is my response to an e-mail I recieved from a nice couple in Illinois. Their current home had lost about 50% of it’s value and they needed to move because of an expanding family and proximity to their work. Because they owe about $80,000 more than their house is currently worth, they needed advice on what their options were. Here was my reply that I thought might be helpful to others in a similar situation.

So, my first question would be…what’s the rental market like near you? If you think you can rent out your current house to cover the payments and other expenses (taxes, insurance, hoa dues, etc.) that could save you some financial pain, although it would mean becoming a landlord which can be a hassle of you don’t have the right tenants. If you were able to get a signed lease, the bank may include that as additional income to get you qualified for a loan to buy the new house. (Check with your lender to verify this…they all have their own way of doing things.) This method would prevent any credit score damage and foreclosure issues and still get you into your new place. In addition, You may be able to hold on to the house until the market improves and sell it then. Do some number crunching and look in the paper for rental rates in your area for a similar house. If there is any way that you can afford to do this, I think it is the best option.

If you decide you do not want to go the landlord route, or if you can’t get a new loan without selling the old house, then a short sale is definitely better than a foreclosure, although it will still hurt your credit a bit. A foreclosure is nasty, and makes it nearly impossible to get a mortgage for 5-7 years, as well as doing a number on your credit score. Then if the lender can’t sell the house for as much as the amount that was owed, they could come after you for the difference! I would definitely avoid this choice if at all possible.

A short sale on the other hand, although it does affect your credit score, does not have all of the negative repercussions that a foreclosure would. (Many experts are not sure how much short sales will affect scores, because they are just now becoming popular due to the economic situation we are all facing now. I’ve seen estimates from as little as 50 points to up to 200 points. Either way, your score can be brought up again relatively quickly if you stay on top of all of your other payments.) Most lenders will report the short sale as “settled for less than the amount owed” in your credit report. The big question is how will lenders look at this in the future. My guess is that because there are so many short sales now, if mortgage companies want to do much business in the future, they are going to have to be pretty lenient when it comes to folks that have a short sale in their report.

The FHA or Federal Housing Authority, who is a governmental agency that insures many of the loans made to people buying their primary residence (No investment properties or vacation homes), requires a waiting period of two years after a short sale to get approved for one of their loans. Most of the major lenders have guidelines that are close to this. (Wells Fargo says 3 years for example.) That being said, if you need to move now, it might be a good idea to get the new loan and complete the purchase of the new house before the short sale shows up on your credit report. The problem here is that you can get stuck with two mortgage payments for the time it takes to get the old house sold unless you do things in the right order.  

So this is where a good realtor and mortgage person come in. Things have to happen in a very particular order for this to work out. This is what I would recommend:

1.      Talk to a Realtor who has the SFR designation and one that you trust to handle this. (I can help you find someone qualified in your area if you would like.) Get your old house listed for sale at a price that the realtor thinks will get it sold in 30 to 60 days. Also have the realtor start the short sale process by sending in any financial info, the listing agreement and short sale application to your lender.

2.      Apply for a new loan and let the lender know that you will be selling your current house.

3.      Start looking for a new house

4.      Get an offer on your house AND get the bank to approve the short sale. Make SURE that you have something in writing from the lender that states that they will not pursue a deficiency judgment. Meaning that they will not come after you for the difference between the sale price and the amount owed. This is the most important part of the short sale. Sometimes they will ask you to sign a promissory note to pay off the difference. Remember that these are negotiations and that the lender is simply trying to minimize their loss.

5.      Put in an offer that works for you but make sure that the offer is CONTIGENT ON THE SUCCESSFUL CLOSING OF YOUR CURRENT RESIDENCE. Some sellers will not like this but many are taking whatever they can get in this market. Schedule the closing on the new house to be within a week of the closing on your old house. This way the short sale will not be on your credit report until after the new loan is already closed. Even better if you can have both closing on the same day.

6.      Confused yet? 

As far as getting approved for a short sale, banks are typically looking at these things:

1.      Is the house your primary residence? They have programs and incentives such as HAFA that makes it easier to get approved when it IS your primary residence.

2.      Do you have a legitimate financial hardship? In your case, if your income has not gone down, your argument is that you HAVE to move for your job and that you cannot afford two mortgage payments and can’t get the old house rented for enough to cover the payments. If they think that you can afford your current house and that relocation isn’t absolutely necessary, they will probably not approve the  short sale.

3.      Will the house go to foreclosure if they do not approve the short sale? For this they look at your financial information and your work situation to try to determine whether or not they think you could afford to keep making the payments.

4.      Will the short sale cost the lender less than a foreclosure would? This one is really out of your hands, but typically the answer is yes because of the long, expensive process of doing a foreclosure. 

Another good option if you can’t get a loan to purchase a home is to consider renting for a short time. You could get into a house that suits your needs, in a location that you want, and still have the option of leasing or doing a short sale on your current home.

Hope this is helpful and doesn’t confuse you more! Feel free to call me with other questions or if you want me to recomend a qualified realtor in your area.

-Mike

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Jun 16, 2010 by MichaelS.Dunn.

This is my response to a question asking about programs for short sales and whether short sales were possible for investment property:

That program is called HAFA and is part of HAMP. That is: Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives act which is part of the Home Affordable Modification Program which was instituted with the agreement banks made to receive Tarp funds from the recovery program! Whew!

http://www.roaringforkproperty.com/foreclosure.html

Anyway, the program works really well for:

1. People who are upside down on their primary residence.

2. People who have had a legitimate financial hardship that has caused them to not be able to keep up with their payments.

Investment properties are tough to get approved, but you could always call the lender or apply for a Short Sale Approval. You can get this approval before you even list your property for sale. The lender will base their decision on two main things:

1. Whether they are convinced that you cannot afford to keep the property and whether it is imminent that it will lead to a foreclosure if they do not except a short sale and:

2. Whether that short sale or the foreclosure would be more costly to them.

It is really just a matter of whether the lender is convinced that they will have to foreclose and which alternative costs them the least.

A good article : http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/hotproperty/archives/2007/03/the_new_exit_strategy_a_short_sale.html

My advice would be that if you can afford to keep up with the payments for another year or so then hold on to the properties. I think rental rates will start to come up within the next year, and home values will start to climb, very slowly, again in summer 2012. (Just a guess based on national inventory levels.) One other option if you just want to get out from under the place is a deed in lieu. Again the bank needs to be convinced that this is a property facing imminent foreclosure, and then there are times that they may just take a quit claim deed in return for a release from the debt.

If you are going to proceed with either course of action, make sure to let me know. I have specialized training in handling these and there are a lot of pitfalls to be avoided. Specifically, you want to make sure the bank not only releases the lien and the deed of trust(or mortgage) but also gives you a signed waiver of the deficiency so that they cannot go back after you for a judgment on the loss. The other fallout is the fact that the IRS will treat the portion of the debt that is forgiven as ordinary income unless it was on your primary residence. That can add up to a large tax bill for money you never even saw.

-Mike

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May 21, 2010 by MichaelS.Dunn.

This is my reply to a question about short sales that I recieved a week ago. Thought it would be good info to share:

Hi ,

You’re in good company with the loan modification being denied. I just saw figures that indicated what a failure that program was. Only a small percentage of people that went through the entire application process actual had their loan successfully adjusted and in many cases the adjustment wasn’t enough to help and the homes went into foreclosure anyway.

The good news is that the short sale program with the new HAFA guidlines is working much better. I recently helped two different families get out from under upside down properties with a short sale and the process is much more stream-lined and efficient than it used to be.

Basically, how I handle short sales is to sit down with you and go over the financials and your expectations. If we decide that a short sale is the best option for you ( rather than a modification, deed in lieu, etc.), then I would want to list the property for sale at a price that we think it would sell  for relatively quickly, or in whatever time frame you need.

Then I prepare the short sale package and application to send in to the lenders. This is pretty intensive and needs to be done the way each bank wants it to maximize our chance of getting approval. The package will contain almost everything you submitted for the loan modification (so don’t throw any of that info out) plus some property and comparable information from me to help make a case for a low price.

Then there is usually a month long process of negotiations between myself and the lenders trying to determine who is going to be forgiving the debt and how much of a hit each lender will take. This is the tough part.Once we get approval from the lenders, they will usually tell us what price they will take as their bottom line and what needs to happen for them to accept the short sale in exchange for a release of the lien and the debt.

A couple of important things to keep in mind:

1.      A short sale is usually a much better alternative to a foreclosure for most owners. The short sale process does much less damage to your credit report and in many cases allows you to buy a new home relatively soon after the short sale.

2.      The short sale program works the best for owners who are selling their primary residence rather than an investment, rental or 2^nd home. There usually needs to be some form of hardship as well. (Reduced income, increase in living expenses, health care costs, etc.)

3.      You want to make sure that the bank does not pursue a deficiency judgment after the short sale is complete.

4.      You will likely not be able to make much money on this but again, it is much better than letting it go into foreclosure. The new HAFA program, which Wells Fargo, Chase, Bank of America and most of the large mortgage lending institutions are participating in, allows for up to $1500 to be paid to you from the lender at the time of closing if this property is your principal residence. ( My last client walked away with $980)

5. Make sure you are working with a realtor that has experience doing short sales. Ask them how many short sales they have closed. If they can’t tell you straight out, or they haven’t done any…keep looking. It is also good if the realtor has specific training for foreclosures/short sales, like those with the SFR designation. It is also a good idea to have an experienced attorney involved. 

I usually charge a % of the sale price for my services, which is paid from the proceeds that would otherwise go to the lender.

I would like to hear more from you, regarding whether this is your principal residence, how far behind on payments you are and what your goals are given this difficult situation.Please feel free to call me to discuss this further.

-Mike 

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Mar 24, 2010 by MichaelS.Dunn.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 

Company Name: Harmony Ventures, Inc.

Telephone Number:970-309-9249

Email Address: Mike@RoaringForkProperty.com

Web site address: www. RoaringForkProperty.com

Michael S. Dunn Earns NAR Short Sales and Foreclosure Certification Buyers and Sellers Benefit from REALTOR^® Expertise in Distressed Sales 

City, State, Date — Michael S. Dunn with Harmony Ventures Inc. has earned the nationally recognized Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource certification. The National Association of REALTORS^® offers the SFR certification to REALTORS^® who want to help both buyers and sellers navigate these complicated transactions, as demand for professional expertise with distressed sales grows.

According to a recent NAR survey, nearly one-third of all existing homes sold recently were either short sales or foreclosures.  For many real estate professionals, short sales and foreclosures are the new “traditional” transaction.  REALTORS^® who have earned the SFR certification know how to help sellers maneuver the complexities of short sales as well as help buyers pursue short sale and foreclosure opportunities.

“As leading advocates for homeownership, REALTORS^® believe that any family that loses its home to foreclosure is one family too many, but unfortunately, there are situations in which people just cannot afford to keep their homes, and a foreclosure or a short sale results,” said 2009 NAR President Charles McMillan. “Foreclosures and short sales can offer opportunities for home buyers and benefit the larger community, as well, but it’s extremely important to have the help of a real estate professional like a REALTOR^® who has earned the SFR certification for these kinds of purchases.”  The certification program includes training on how to qualify sellers for short sales, negotiate with lenders, protect buyers, and limit risk, and provides resources to help REALTORS^® stay current on national and state-specific information as the market for these distressed properties evolves.

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