Life is Too Short for Short Sales!

When it comes to making sales in real estate, I focus on the listings that are genuine, and can close escrow. I would estimate that 90% of short sale listings never sell and close escrow. The fallout factor of short sale escrows is huge, because what buyer can and would want to wait months to get an answer on an offer? Sure, the owner will accept any price, because he is not getting any of the proceeds due to his upside down equity position. In a short sale, the sellers owe more on their loan than the asking price, usually tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. The lender holding that loan, must approve of the short payoff and loss. If they do make that decision, it will happen just before the property gets foreclosed on at the public trustees sale on the courthouse steps. The lender may end up approving some loss, but maybe not at the original price the seller accepted. Buyers are reluctant to hang on for months waiting for an unsure tranasaction, and I don't blame them for backing out. Most of the time the property just ends up going thru the foreclosure process and becoming a "bank owned" listing. When it gets repossessed by the bank, the bank will aggressively price it to sell . The market is full of great listings of bank owned and other well priced listings, so why mess with a short sale. In my opinion, the listings that are short sales are nothing more than a big waste of time. Most agents like myself, won't even show these listings.