August 28th, 2008
I am closing a deal today and I received a call from the escrow officer telling me about errors on the sellers side. Then I was asked to give up my commission to pay the sellers outstanding utility bills ($3000). First, I was surprised to receive a call from the Escrow Officer about something the listing agent should of tried to negotiate with me. Next… the listing agent did not get all of the concessions of the primary lien holder in writing. So Escrow in the eleventh hour received calls and data from the primary lien holder with about 600.00 in new charges to the sale of the property. Now the listing agent is calling me asking me to pay out my commission for them not doing the basic of due diligence, GETTING EVERYTHING IN WRITING! What is the lesson in my rant?
1. If you are representing a Short Sale and the clock is ticking to the auction date, and another agent brings you a deal that is acceptable, Do not go asking the buyers agent for insane commission compromise to make up for your clients mistakes. The buyers agent is bringing the money to the table, be thankful. Especially when there are so few qualified buyers.
2. Have a file with all outstanding liens on the property, and a HUD prepared for what the lien holders will recieve at pay out. The house is a foreclosure short sale, the owners aren’t paying the utility bill’s. These bill’s will need to be paid at closing, the bank needs to know those numbers or their payout will be short. Then you have no deal.
3. Over all do not bite the hand that is trying to feed you.
4. Know the listing agent is making 0.00 dollars on this deal, because of them not having their ducks in a row.
Read Comments (1)
August 13th, 2008
Over the past few months a number of clients started out as leads that were all about “really giving to the Bank” in short sale deals. And every time the bank would send back the offer with a counter offer at Tax Assessment Value. Which I think was just as insulting as our low ball offer. Each time this would happen my clients would get into this huff about why the bank “should of” accepted our offer. These “Should of” statement’s looked like this:
- The Banks are loosing billion’s why aren’t that trying to liquidate this property?
- The Banks have massive inventories and they don’t want to accept this offer?
- We are helping them out of trouble.
- Doesn’t the Bank know the condition of this property?
- Doesn’t the bank know how much it will take to fix up this property?
- This is a down market and we are buying with a risk of the market slipping further.
- Why did it take so long for us to get back such a bad counter offer?
The fact is when humans want something we always think of an excuse to why we should have it. For the most part what I have learned is that the Lien Holders are in terrifying survival mode. Every person your offer goes to at the lender right now is trying to SAVE THEIR JOB. Your client is right; the banks are loosing billions; and people get fired when the company they work for loose money. So each employee that sees your file is trying to keep that dollar return value, as high as possible. The reason for that is when it is quarterly report time don’t you think every person trying to save their job is going to try to show how much money they didn’t loose, because if they don’t your eventually going to be seeing their house in foreclosure. I put food on the table everyday, because of how cheap I buy houses in this market. But when writing an offer remember lenders are fighting tooth and nail to keep their doors open. They are negotiating hard here in the Northwest to not let that house go cheap, be patient the price will come down. But you will need to prove to the lien holder, why it needs to. By you not giving in, and by you inundating them with a paper trail showing them why that price needs to come down, the lien holder then can justify that sale price. It is not easy, it does take time, and you will have head aches over the process. Sometimes people cry.
Read Comments (0)
