How some banks do their Short Sales

I decided to hopefully create some type of platform where us agents, can share our individual experiences with different banks when it comes to negotiating short sales. Short sales are when an owner needs to sale their house for less than what it is worth. The process entailed in seeking approval from the bank to sell the property at a discount, is a short sale. I started to do short sales back in 2007. Although, I became licensed agent in 1995, I was very afraid of doing them back then, as they were not as popular as they are now. The few agents I knew who did them in these years talked about a lot of work with no guarantee of ever getting them through.

Now almost all our inventory in the Plainfield and North Plainfield area in New Jersey that I specialize in about 80% of listing inventory are short sales. So we really have to do them, like it or not.

I'll share my experience with one bank I have worked with, it is EMC Mortgage & Chase. Both banks merged together. This is my analysis of working with them. I'll just refer to them as Chase only. Chase works pretty quickly. Once you call them over the phone that you want to send in your short sale package to them, they will order a broker price opinion (BPO) right over the phone with you. A BPO is what an outside agent or appraiser comes out to the property to value what the property is worth, in a sense, like a mini-appraisal. Whatever the BPO comes out to, the bank will want close to that figure. Once the BPO results comes in, again, Chase works pretty quickly & will disclose to the listing agent what the BPO came back at & will more than likely request that same amount. I noticed that Chase does not go much lower than their BPO price. One short sale I am working with now, the assigned negotiator, did come down on price because I sent over my own recent sold comparables that showed a lower price then their BPO price. A negotiator is a representative of the bank that is responsible for doing all the negotiating terms of a short sale & collects all the necessary data needed to complete the transaction. Overall, I would say they are very efficient to work with when it comes time to do a short sale. But what I would say, as a buyer, do not expect to get rock-bottom prices on your short sale.

So any agents out there in cyber-world reading this, please share your experiences with the banks you have worked with. This way we can advance our industry knowledge & come together to be able to work better with these short sales. I will continue to share my experiences on this blog.