I get this question often:

How do I speed up a Short Sale in Jacksonville?

A short sale is a long and tedious process for the seller, the buyer, the agents, and the bank/s holding the mortgage.  No matter what, it takes more time to close a short sale than a regular real estate transaction.  Can you speed it up?  Yes, absolutely.  However, it requires knowledge on the front end before making the offer.

Keys to speeding up a Short Sale:

  1. Work with Professionals: First and foremost, you must choose the right REALTOR to sell your home.  Choose the wrong REALTOR from the beginning and you have pretty much sealed your fate.  Questions to ask?  How many years have you been doing short sales?  Have you ever closed a short sale deal?  Do you negotiate with the bank or do you have a team that does it or an attorney that does it?  What % of your business is short sales?  What % of your short sales are under contract?  KEY POINT: Choose wisely on the front end and the rest will fall in to place.  
  2. Document submission: Your REALTOR team should be doing this for you, but if they aren't:  Don't submit one document at a time to the bank.  Get it all together at once.  Get everything & leave nothing out.  Submit it all to the bank and call them every day until they have confirmed that they received your documents.  Bank of America often takes a week or more before they will confirm they have received the docs.
  3. Contract: ALL Short Sale contracts should be AS IS with NO repairs to be done by sellers.  Can the buyers get a home inspection, yes - however they should get one PRE-CONTRACT.
  4. Contract Offer Price: The offer price should be the TRUE market value or close to it.  Will the bank take a little less?  Yes but not by much.  If you are a buyer looking to "Steal" a property, honestly you will probably never get what you are looking for as those properties are not the properties that you would agree to live in.  Submitting a very "Low Ball" offer to "see if the bank will take it" is a complete waste of time.  If the house is in a war zone or in complete shambles, and I'm talking basically destroyed, you can get away with submitting a low ball offer, otherwise don't waste the time writing up the contract.  KEY POINT: Submit a realistic contract and offer price supported by recent comparable sales.
  5. Follow up: Call, call, call, call, and continue to call the bank.  Squeaky wheel.  Your agent should do this, your attorney should do this, and you the seller should do this.  It only helps to keep the pressure on.  Squeaky wheel them!
  6. Expectations: If you are a Seller, Buyer, Buyer's Agent, Seller's Agent, set the appropriate expectations.  The expectation is that this is a contract, it all hinges on the bank's approval and it will take 60+ days in most cases.
Posted by Brad Officer on
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