Home sellers can easily find hundreds of agents eager to list their homes, but finding a short sale listing agent is more difficult. That's because a short sale listing agent does more than slap the listing into MLS and plop a sign in the yard.
The short sale agent handles negotiations with the bank. If the agent has no experience dealing with loss mitigation and negotiators, the seller is the person who may suffer. More than half of my real estate closings in Sacramento for the past few years have been short sales. I know first hand what it takes to get them closed and, quite frankly, short sales are a ton of work. Novices should not handle short sales.
Searching for a Short Sale Listing Agent
Due to rising numbers of short sales in certain parts of the country since 2006, many real estate agents have decided to market themselves as short sale specialists. Some of those agents have little or no short sale experience.
Here are ways to find a short sale listing agent:
◦Referrals From Family / Friends
In some areas, foreclosures are ubiquitous and more the norm than a regular sale. Sellers may already know someone who successfully closed a short sale, and that seller is an excellent source for providing a referral.
◦Ask an Agent for a Referral
Agents who don't list short sale transactions generally know which agents are short sale specialists. Agents judge each other by harsher standards, I have discovered, than buyers judge agents, so you're likely to be directed to a top-notch short sale listing agent. Plus, agents regularly pay each other referral fees, which means the referring agent has an added incentive to make sure you end up in the right hands -- because if it doesn't close, they don't get a referral fee.
◦Attend Short Sale Open Houses
Find out if the agent hosting the open house is the listing agent. Sometimes, agents let associates in their offices hold open listings. Talk to the listing agent and try to get a sense of how many short sales this agent has handled and whether the agent is knowledgeable.
Feel free to reach out to me anytime with your questions about short sales for buyers and sellers.
Tim Schmitz
Coldwell Banker Bain
www.RainCityShortSales.com
www.RainCityAgent.com
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Tim: You cannot swipe content found elsewhere on the Internet and paste it into your blog. That's plagiarism. This article was lifted from my site at About.com, which is copyrighted by me and The New York Times:
ReplyDeletehttp://homebuying.about.com/od/shortsale/a/012209_SSAgent.htm
Please remove this blog post.
Elizabeth Weintraub
Great blog site. I have been looking at a few deciding what we want to do in term of a blog and yours is great. Good info. I think thats the next thing on our marketing list.
ReplyDeleteOn the tech side we have ventured into Listing Syndication which can create thousands of backlinks pretty easily. We recently started doing Youtube Video syndication where we automatically create a video with voiceover for each of our listings and then syndicate them to youtube along with all the major listing sites. We have had real good luck In terms of backlinks and SEO. You can see an example of one of our youtube channels here. http://www.youtube.com/user/BHGDesertProperties
Tim,
ReplyDeleteI've heard a lot of the negotiation with a short sale or foreclosure are done with the bank over the internet. As in, bidding and accepting is done via a portal on the computer. How does an agent come into play in this situation?
Visum RE
Seattle Condos
Great Info! You may also Watch The Flip for further information.
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