Short sales creating headaches - Tampa Bay Business Journal:

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It had been at least a month since they sold thei r homein Fayetteville, N.C., so buying one shoulsd be the easy part. It hasn’t been. “We’rw frustrated,” Christine Augustine said. “We’red three weeks away from moving, and we stil l don’t know if we’re good to The Augustines have founs themselves caught in the short sale market where sellerss on the brink of foreclosure are trying to dumphomese they’re upside down on. Bankas could take months to approvesa deal, forcing many buyers foraging for good deals to walk “The name ‘short sale’ is anything but,” said Bill a real estate practitioner with .
“Banksd are making us jump through so many hoopzsthat it’s taking forever to get deald done. It’s putting pressure on price s and keeping our recovery fromactually Annoying, but legal? The number of shoryt sale offers may be overwhelming to banks. But several residentiall real estate practitioners, including Realtors, told the that brokerss representing sellers are the ones responsible for gumming up the processz by sidestepping rules designerd to expedite transactions for bona fide One practice that has raise some ire in the real estate community is brokeras representing short sellers collecting multipled offers on active MLS listing s and sending all of them to the bankfor That’s tying up potential buyerds that may have little chance to actuall purchase the property if their bid is among those in the lowef tier.
“These are people that coule instead be looking at other properties they have a better chanceof getting,” said Matthew Augustyniak, owner of in Bradenton, whicj specializes in short sales. But such a move is actuallyh withinMLS rules, said Ann president and CEO of the , which manages the and Pasc o counties. “Some sellers want offerzs to go directly to the bank first to seeif they’ll even acceptg it before singing anything,” Guiberson said. “If the seller doesn’t sign off on it, then it’s not a pendingg contract.
On the other a potential buyer can walk away atany There’s nothing holding them to the offer, even if the bank acceptsa it at some The problem, some Realtors say, is that MLS doesn’tt have required fields to identify a listinv as a short sale. Listiny agents, for the most part, are suppose d to identify short sales in a section knowbn asRealtor notes, which is available only to real estat practitioners. But digging through thousands of listings to find short sales can be and not all Realtors add theproperr notes.
Either way, sending a batch of varioud offers to banks is exactly what the original lending institutions haveaskefd for, said Dallas, who typicallyh represents sellers. Over the threr months it could take for a bank to the top bidder could grow impatient anddrop out, leavinfg smaller bids on the table. Sendinb multiple offers saves a seller from havingt to start the bank process allover “We’ll note on the listingh to other Realtors that offers have been submittedx to the bank but the listing remainsd active,” Dallas said. “Banke want the highest and best price, so if someonee wanted to make a bigger offerf afterthe fact, there would be room to do it.
” Just two years ago, homebuyeras paying all cash made up just 12.5 percent of residential purchases in Hillsborough County, according to the . In April that jumped to 24 percent of all Andlast month, cash buyers represented 39 percentr of all purchases, outpacing conventional financing by nearly 29 Short sales might be the darling of cash-wielding buyers, thoswe looking for mortgages are getting in on the too, but not always by choice. “Wse only plan on being there forthrere years, so we originally were goingg to rent,” said Augustine, whosde husband will be stationed at . “But then we saw all the greagt dealson houses, and thoughtr it makes sense to buy.
There are a lot of dealse out there, but it’s hard to find one that isn’y a short sale.” Short sales aren’tt the only bargain out there. Homes that already have gone back to the bank also are beiny offered below their most recentsale prices, and buyers won’t have to wait montha to get an answer. “Once the bank has the it becomes motivated to get it sold as quicklgyas possible,” said Rae Catanese, an agentr with Prudential Tropical Realty. “Many times we can get an answere back within48 It’s pretty smooth sailing.
” Potential buyers also have to be realisti about the market, PRO’s Guiberson Lower median prices have convincer some buyers there are deals too good to be true on the markef when in reality, it’s simply reflecting that more homesd on the lower end of the pricingt spectrum are selling near actual value while higher-ensd home sales are a bit stagnant. “You’re not gointg to get a $500,000 home for $180,000,” Guibersob said. “I don’t think you’ll ever see the marketr that bad.
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