Lien Holder Negotiations
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.
