Short Sales - Buyer Strategy To Getting The Best Deals

If you are considering a purchase in the Tampa Bay, Florida area, you are no doubt expecting to take great advantage of this market and the opportunity to save BIG $$$ on your purchase! You may have heard about all the foreclosures, but how knowledgeable are you on
SHORT SALES?
In a Short Sale, the seller is in a pre-foreclosure situation. He is not able to continue supporting the property (both its mortgage and expenses). Because of the fall in market value, both sellers and lenders are discovering that the current value of a property simply won't cover the balance of the mortgage.

So... consider the following example:
A couple purchased the beach front condo pictured above in 2005 for $679,000. They put 20% in cash down and took out a mortgage for $543,000. Along the way, with prices still climbing, they took out an additional line of credit for $60,000. You see where this is heading, right? The total debt against this condo is around $600,000. BUT the market value has slid up to 20-25% in this case... bring the current market value to between $509,000 and $540,000. To get aggressive in selling the condo quickly, we as realtors advised them to price it at $499,000... 26.5% less than what the seller paid.

In a short sale, the lender (in some cases both first and second mortgage lenders) is faced with making the decision whether to accept an offer on a property that is less than what is owed. Many factors come into this situation such as 1) The stacks of files with similar situations and the workload it represents to the lender; 2) The impact of the negative assets on the lender's balance sheet; and 3) The ability to recoup any of the loss from the original seller.

For that reason, the process can take a while. Buyers looking for an exceptional value and willing to be patient can wind up with an incredible deal! Really good short sale deals are usually under contract within the first two weeks of coming onto the market. Though our Buyer Program, we can enter the exact criteria of what a buyer is looking for with one of those criteria being a short sale. When a new property comes on the market that fits that criteria, an email notification automatically goes out to the buyer within minutes of it coming on the market! This is absolutely one of the best ways for a buyer to take advantage of the current market and save $$$!