Can I Do a Short Sale?
In the course of doing business with buyers and sellers I have discovered a disturbing trend. There are sellers that have their homes for sale that are current in their payments but having difficulty selling in this current market enviroment. They have been reading about short sales and assume that if worse comes to worse they will change their listing to a short sale without any obligation to their lender. Worse still are real estate agents that do not have any knowlege of short sales and are giving erroneous and dangerous advice to their listing clients that there is not a consequence and absolved of debt by listing short sale status.
These are very dangerous waters that agents and sellers are treading in. If you as a real estate agent do not educate yourselves and educate your sellers then you are opening yourselves up to litigation for not disclosing facts about short sale qualifications. To convince a lender to accept a short sale the borrower is going to have to show true hardship usually in the form of a letter to show the lender he/she cannot pay the loan. Some examples are divorce, military deployment,death of spouse, loss of a job, bad health.They will also have to supply the following in addition to their hardship letter.
1. Copies of the past 2 paystubs
2. Copies of the past 2 years of federal income tax/W2's
3. Copies of the past 3 months bank statements for all checking and saving accounts for all borrowers
4. Copy of First and Second Mortagage monthly statements
There is much more but you get the idea. Please be careful and get educated.
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