Short sales creating headaches - Tampa Bay Business Journal:

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It had been at least a mont since they sold their homein N.C., so buying one should be the easy It hasn’t been. “We’re Christine Augustine said. “We’re three weeks away from and westill don’ t know if we’re good to go.” The Augustineds have found themselves caught in the short sale markeft where sellers on the brink of foreclosurs are trying to dump homes they’rw upside down on. Banks could take month s to approvea deal, forcing many buyers foraging for good dealz to walk away. “The name ‘short is anything but,” said Bill Dallas, a real estatde practitioner with .
“Banks are makinyg us jump through so many hoopsxthat it’s taking forever to get deals It’s putting pressure on prices and keeping our recovery from actually Annoying, but legal? The number of short sale offersw may be overwhelming to banks. But severaol residential real estate practitioners, including Realtors, told the that brokeres representing sellers are the ones responsibl for gumming up the process by sidestepping rule s designed to expedite transactions for bonafide buyers.
One practicwe that has raised some ire in the real estat community is brokers representing short sellers collectin g multiple offers on active MLS listings and sendinbg all of them to the bankfor That’s tying up potential buyers that may have littlr chance to actually purchase the propertty if their bid is among those in the lowerr tier. “These are people that could insteaed be looking at other properties they have a better chancweof getting,” said Matthew Augustyniak, owneer of in Bradenton, which specializess in short sales.
But such a move is actuallty withinMLS rules, said Ann president and CEO of the , whicu manages the and Pasco “Some sellers want offers to go directl to the bank first to see if they’ll even accept it before singing anything,” Guiberso said. “If the seller doesn’t sign off on it, then it’ws not a pending contract. On the other a potential buyer can walk away atany There’s nothing holding them to the offer, even if the bank accepta it at some The problem, some Realtors say, is that MLS doesn’tr have required fields to identify a listing as a short sale.
Listing agents, for the most are supposed to identify short sales in a sectionm known asRealtor notes, which is available only to real estatr practitioners. But digging through thousandx of listings to find short sales can be and not all Realtors add the proper Either way, sending a batc of various offers to banks is exactly what the originak lending institutions have asked for, said Dallas, who typically represents Over the three months it could take for a bank to the top bidder could grow impatient and drop out, leavinf smaller bids on the Sending multiple offers saves a seller from having to start the bank process all over “We’ll note on the listing to other Realtorss that offers have been submitted to the bank but the listingh remains active,” Dallas “Banks want the highest and best price, so if someonr wanted to make a bigger offer after the fact, there would be room to do Just two years ago, homebuyers paying all cash made up just 12.
5 percent of residential purchases in Hillsborough County, according to the . In Aprilp 2008, that jumped to 24 percentt ofall sales. And last cash buyers represented 39 percent of all outpacing conventional financing by nearly 29 Short sales might be the darlingof cash-wieldingt buyers, those looking for mortgages are gettinyg in on the game, too, but not alwayds by choice. “We only plan on beingv there forthree years, so we originallyg were going to rent,” said Augustine, whose husbanr will be stationed at . “But then we saw all the greag dealson houses, and thought it makesz sense to buy.
There are a lot of dealxs out there, but it’s hard to find one that isn’r a short sale.” Short sales aren’t the only bargain out there. Homesw that already have gone back to the bank also are beingv offered below their most recent sales andbuyers won’t have to wait month to get an answer. “Once the bank has the it becomes motivated to get it sold as quickltyas possible,” said Rae Catanese, an agent with Prudentialk Tropical Realty.
“Many times we can get an answer back within48 It’s pretty smooth Potential buyers also have to be realisticc about the market, PRO’s Guiberson Lower median prices have convinced some buyers there are deals too good to be true on the market when in it’s simply reflecting that more homes on the lowet end of the pricing spectrum are selling near actual value while higher-end home sales are a bit stagnant. “You’r not going to get a $500,000 home for $180,000,” Guibersomn said. “I don’t think you’ll ever see the markeft that bad.
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