This picture was taken on the St Johns River in St Johns County while showing homes.  Great set up!  Check out all waterfront real estate currently on the market.

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Helping a good friend locate, negotiate, and close on their first Waterfront Home in Jacksonville, we were just finishing up our final walk thru the day of closing and witnessed a spectacular scene.  

This picture is just off the back of their new waterfront home overlooking the water, and that's a Bald Eagle hunting a seagull! (which he caught and flew off with).  You just don't see this everyday!


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Citi Mortgage Short Sale Success!

One of my favorite banks to work with on Short Sales has to be Citi Mortgage.  Fast, responsive, and realistic.  

Too often we get counter offers from banks that are 2006 prices - knowing the house will never appraise at such a blown out price, we have to go through the lengthy value dispute.  Citi hasn't done this as much, and they seem to be realistic on values.  

This particular short sale in Jacksonville was another fast sale.  The home was on the market for just a few weeks and the 3rd showing went to contract.  Buyers were very fast with all addendum request and the Sellers were super fast with all updated documents as requested by the bank.  

We received the approval letter and full…

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 great article by Donna Fuscaldo, @donnabail on Twitter, for FoxBusiness.com.  The article covers How To Speed Up The Short Sale Process.  Not only well written, but they used a very credible source:  Brad Officer  of RE/MAX & a Redfin Broker out of Phoenix, Marcus Fleming.  

How to Speed Up The Short Sale Process

  1. Start with Professionals:  This is probably the largest Debt you have -therefore work with a Short Sale Specialist.  Every agent has jumped on the bandwagon of becoming a "Certified Distressed Expert", but come on?!?!  Research your chosen agent, make sure they have a clue and not just a 3 hour class.  
  2. You must use an Attorney:  Forget what your bank told you about it being as easy as submitting a few documents.  It's not that…

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We are seeing some signs of progress for rising prices.  Albeit a few percentage points increase from the drastically depressed values - but hey - positive is better than flat and a whole lot better than declines in value! News is everywhere of the housing pick up.  Here's a good video:

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Odd trend in the market.  The inventory of homes available to purchase in Jacksonville has plummeted.  I'm talking full on nose dive and it hasn't started pulling up to level off yet.  BUT - the average number of days on market has actually increased. My theory:  Lower priced homes are being snatched up by investors in record numbers.  I have several very large, institutionally large, investment firms that I market properties directly to.  They are buying site unseen and cash closings.  As fast as we can get them on the market......within their pre-set parameters.  That handles the lower priced market.  HOWEVER, the middle priced and up are still sitting.  $400,000 + seems to be sitting and waiting just like a few years ago.  I'd like to see this trend…

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Bank of America Short Sales are getting faster!

The speed up is happening as they've finally developed some internal systems and processes that make sense.  Oh yea, and they've stopped changing them every 10 days, which helps.  They are still struggling with the massive incoming volume of short sale applications, contracts, and inquiries, but hey - that's to be expected for the largest holder/servicer of distressed mortgages.  

One great new addition to the Bank of America short sale system has been the ability to apply for a HAFA short sale BEFORE we have the property listed for sale.  The benefit of this is that the bank will actually provide you with a written document that states the terms of sale, i.e., approved listing price!  This is great…

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A new study just came out on how home buyers shop for a home.  This study was a collaboration between Google and the National Association of Realtors.  A couple of interesting statistics were found.  (interesting to me).

As anyone who is currently alive can tell you, home buyers shop for homes on line.  Actually only 9 out of 10 use the internet as their primary shopping tool, and that's mind boggling to me.  I just can't understand what the other 1 out of 10 does.  ???

Another interesting stat from the study:  Days of research on the web before a potential home buyer "takes action on the site".  That would lead me to believe before they request information about homes they've found or sign up to keep up with their favorites, etc.  The stat finds…

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Who prices a short sale listing?  

Your Short Sale REALTOR

Will the bank give a listing price?

Nope.  95% of the time, the bank request we submit an offer.  Very very rarely, we encounter a pre-approved list price through a seller who has an FHA loan or sometimes through Bank of America's short sale cooperative program.  However, even then it's dicey to say the least.  

Making it as difficult as possible to price, sell, get short sale bank approved, then buyer's bank approval of price for closing, there are several prices that seem to always come up:

  1. Property Appraiser's Market Value:  I've found these numbers to be very high and very low.  However, they do have an algorithm producing this market value.  
  2. Zillow:  Ahh Zillow, the…

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Interesting stats for today's real estate market versus last year's real estate market here in Jacksonville, FL.  This is a look at short sales sold in Jacksonville vs total sales of all properties in Jacksonville.  

On the market right now:

Currently Active Short Sales available for purchase:  1,003

Currently Active NON short sales available for purchase:  3,782

6 month period look back.  Duval County only.  

May - November 2012:  SOLD Short Sales only = 1,055 

May - November 2012:  TOTAL sales = 4,639

Same months 1 year ago

May - November 2011:  SOLD Short Sales only = 827

May - November 2011:  TOTAL sales = 4,177

A great point about this data:  Foreclosure volume is down, but Short Sale volume is up as you can see in the…

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