Foreclosure Counseling Certication

At Park Avenue Realty in Plainfield we offer free foreclosure counseling for homeowners at risk of losing their homes. We offer these services via a non-profit called NID Counseling Agency. I would highly recommend Realtors to get certified to be able to offer these alternative services to their customer. Sometimes we cannot always just advise our clients to short sale their property. Homeowners can explore other choices & see if they qualify for a loan modification from their lender before making any drastic decisions. Through NID, we assist homeowners in this difficult process & facilitate negotiating a work-out option with their lender.

I am posting a Neighborworks artice below & the link where you can locate it. Neighborworks offers foreclosure counseling certification training. If you are already affiliated with a non-profit you can possibly qualify for a scholarship to pay for your certification. The scholarships are very easy to obtain.

Explore your option as a Realtor in finding ways to expand your services to your clientelle.

http://www.nw.org/network/training/homeownership/ForeclosureTraining2.asp

NEWS RELEASE

January 11, 2011

Contact:
Doug Robinson, 202-220-2360, drobinson@nw.org

NeighborWorks Receives More Than $7 Million
in Latest Round of HUD Counseling and Training Grants
Receives Largest Training Award

WASHINGTON – NeighborWorks America and members of the NeighborWorks network were recently awarded more than $7 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as part of the department’s grants to support housing counseling and housing counselor training.

Specifically, the NeighborWorks Center for Homeownership Education and Counseling (NCHEC) was awarded
$3.05 million to continue its work in promoting counseling standards and building the skill capacity of nonprofit housing organizations along with administering the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) program. NeighborWorks America is the largest trainer and certifier of community development and housing professionals.

NeighborWorks America also was awarded $1.58 million for comprehensive housing counseling. This counseling helps to create homeowners who are less likely to experience mortgage default. Counseling provides consumers with high-quality information about mortgage products and budgeting, which increases the sustainability of affordable homeownership. These funds will be used to support the homeownership counseling activity of members of the NeighborWorks network.

In addition, NeighborWorks America received $300,000 for HECM counseling, a growing part of the national housing counseling framework designed to help senior citizens make informed mortgage choices.

Finally, $2.3 million was awarded to more than 60 NeighborWorks network organizations around the U.S. committed to providing affordable homeownership solutions to low- and moderate-income families.

“NeighborWorks is committed to providing the best and most comprehensive housing counseling services available,” said Eileen Fitzgerald, acting CEO for NeighborWorks America. “Counselors trained to high standards who deliver important, relevant and timely information about housing to consumers are critical to building strong communities. We’re excited that HUD has recognized the scale and capacity of NeighborWorks America and the NeighborWorks network to deliver these necessary services to communities all across America.”

About NeighborWorks America
NeighborWorks America creates opportunities for people to improve their lives and strengthen their communities by providing access to homeownership and to safe and affordable rental housing. Since 1991, we have assisted nearly 1.2 million low- to moderate-income families with their housing needs. Much of our success is achieved through our support of the NeighborWorks network ― more than 230 community development organizations working in more than 4,400 urban, suburban and rural communities in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. In the last five years, NeighborWorks organizations have generated more than $15 billion in reinvestment in these communities. NeighborWorks America is the nation’s leading trainer of community development and affordable housing professionals.

HAFA Guidelines

HAFA, which stands for Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives, offers homeowners alternatives to foreclosure. For instance, when a homeowner can not qualify for a loan modification, another alternative offered by the bank will be allowing the homeowner to sell their property at a discount as I have been posting in my recent blogging. One of the most important highlights of the HAFA program for short sales is the relocation assistance of $3,000 that a homeowner can qualify for at the time of closing. Under normal circumstances, a homeowner is not allowed to profit from a short sale, obviously because the bank is allowing the homeowner to sell at a loss to the bank. There is a lot of paperwork involved for homeowners to qualify for HAFA, because whenever government is involved, well.....you know the story.

Recently, I processed a HAFA short sale with Select Portfolio Servicing (SPS). They were requesting too much lengthy information from my client. So the short sale rep converted the HAFA short sale to a regular short sale. This omitted the request for additional documents from the homeowner. Now the wonderful thing on this deal, SPS still offered to give my client the $3,000 relocation assistance.

Catch this video from CDPE about the HAFA initiative, although it's old, you can get a better understanding & log-on to their website for updates on future webinars. CDPE stands for Certified Distressed Property Expert. They offer a professional certfication program for Realtors for mastering the ins & outs of short sales.

Short Sales with Bank of America

One of the banks, I would like to cover today is Bank of America with their short sales. Typically, banks require that agents send a short sale package for an offer to the bank via fax. Bank of America had required that all their short sales be transmitted via an online database system called Equator. Basically, all communications are done through this system also. So constant contact has to be through Equator via its email system. Quite hard, when you are trying to chase down a negotiator to get a response.

This process seems to take longer for most agents. I personally prefer it, being that I am an Email Queen. Quite frankly, I think both processes, Equator & traditional form of phone/fax communication with a bank take almost the same amount of time. Although some Bank of America reps claim that short sales will not be accepted unless it is through the Equator system, a lot of agents are still getting away with sending it the traditional way. To each its own.

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.

Short sale help

Ever considered going into real estate? There's a lot of good deals in the current market to take advantage of now. Anyone interested in free short sale training? I have 18 years of real estate knowledge that I would enjoy sharing with the right person. Can it be you? If so, email me at:
nj_dreamhouse@yahoo.com

Action Plan

Looking forward to jumping back into my real estate career again. Much lies ahead. A lot of fun days, a lot of upsets, I know. But I have my freedom again, and there is no price tag you can place on that.

Feel free to visit me anytime at Coldwell Banker at 1015 Park Avenue Plainfield.

Alma