Let's be honest, short sales in Jacksonville are a part of our life and will be for some time to come.  Let's also be honest about the process of selling or buying a short sale, it can be painful as you wait for months and months not knowing if the bank will accept the offer.

The good news:  Short Sales are speeding up!

The time frame for getting an approval from the bank is hovering around 80 days.  Believe it or not, that is a fairly big improvement over just a few months ago when almost all banks were dragging before the holidays.

Why Short Sales are speeding up:

  • Proactive Banks: Several banks have decided to get real, real fast.  Chase, for one, finally recognized they had a problem and started initializing the document collection from…

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Selling a home in Jacksonville?   Avoid these 6 mistakes:

  1. Pricing for Yesteryear: Too many home sellers are caught up in what the home is worth based on the bubble years.  It's very important to start from scratch by having a market report created that will establish a value range.  If you would like an opinion of value contact a licensed Jacksonville Real Estate Agent.
  2. Lack of Competitive Knowledge: You must understand what is on the market that will be your competition.  It's more than just a price.  Do the competitors have a pool, private yard, large yard, culdesac, bonus room, 3 car garage, screened lanai, etc?  Knowing who your competitors are will help to price appropriately.
  3. Hiring the Wrong Agent: Today's market requires more skill…

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The Spring season of home buying is here and inventories of homes for sale in North East Florida reflect the sales activity.  Items to take note of:

Months Inventory: Inventory is going down faster than new listings are hitting the market.

Active Listings: Check out the red dots trending down.

New Listings: The gold dots in this graph show an uptick in new listings, which is normal for this time of year as sellers prepare their homes for the Spring selling season.

Sold: The black dots identify the sold inventory, and as expected, sales volume is up.

Important Take Away: Homes are selling!  Listening to the news you would think there are 1 or 2 sales per month, but that's just not the case.  Homes are absolutely selling every single day…

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Bank of America Short Sale: Instituted a system called Equator to better handle the process.   It has!  They've gone from the worst to one of the best and to make it even better, BOA is often ordering a full appraisal on the property rather than hinging their entire valuation on a random Broker Price Opinion from some random yahoo from 5 counties away willing to complete the tedious task for $45.  BOA is now a preferred bank to work with on short sales.  

Wells Fargo Short Sale: Wells goes through cycles and I think it's most often determined by the negotiator.  Currently, I'm having good success with Wells and I've had great success with Wells in the past including a 14 day approval that is very rare.  Wells Fargo is a preferred short sale bank.

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