Hi,

Yes a short sale negotiator is the person the seller designates to work with his lenders as his representative. It can be his agent, attorney, 3rd party or anyone else. It helps to have someone who is familar with the process and knows what banks will and will not accept. To push back on unreasonable demands and work with appraisers who are doing the appraisals. It's an art.....

The good news is there are many of us agents who have the experience to do this....I have short sale information on my website about the process for both sellers and buyers, if you would like to get a bit more information about short sales.

Karen

A short sale negotiator negotiates with the lender representatives. An inexperienced negotiator will put the entire transaction at risk as they will not have proficiency in the following areas:

- Refuting the banks assertions of current market value.
- Negotiating more than just a release of the lien(s). (Promissory Notes and Deficiency Judgments, etc.)
- Ability to escalate a short sale transaction to the proper individual or department within the lender organization.

Short Sale Negotiator 101

Short Sale Negotiators should be persistent yet kind

Short Sale Negotiators should understand everything there is to foreclosure & mortgage law in every state they service

Short Sale Negotiators should be extremely organized

Short Sale Negotiators should work in teams

Short Sale Negotiators should, in most cases, not be the agent in the transaction

Short Sale Negotiators should have a track record of successful closings with a 90% + success rate (there is NO room to allow your negotiator to LEARN how to do short sales from YOUR short sale!)

Short Sale Negotiators should know what lenders are willing to do/not to do before even entering negotiations

See the blog for more info. on what short sale negotiatiors should do, or most importantly, KNOW.

A short sale negotiator works out the best deal for the seller, the buyer and the lender. Coming from the lender/servicer perspective, I can tell you that each party has completely different motivations.

I have managed a reporting operations for one of the top three servicing companies and more recently have been involved in getting the largest bank in US compliant with the Federal regulations for a $1.5 trillion portfolio of mortgage loans, a good portion of it defaulted loans.

I am currently in the business of brokering large short sale payoff deals with the bank. I also am open to taking on negotiation of loan by loan short sale packages and can guarantee fast turnaround. My fees are part fixed, part nominal % based on your profit.

Contact me at greenbricks at yahoo dot com or call 561 306 7018 to discuss this further

Thanks
S Shenoy

you're right on when you say short sales are frustrating! short sale negotiators come in all shapes and sizes. some are good, some are bad. some get the job done and others don't. since you are buying, you really don't get any say in that though.

i have a property that is coming on the market in brea between $520k and $540k that wil not be a short sale or bank repo. 4 bed 2 bath 1600+sq ft. great neighborhood. if that's in your price range, email me direct for a private showing. it's not on the market yet.

aaron zapata, prudential ca realty BREA
aaron@aaronzapata.com

~Yes they do deal direct


He/She is the person who writes out the lovely approval letters to get your home sold! It can take months and many different levels to get the "phone call" from these people. Don't mistake these people for the layers of customer service reps.

They are the persons who the bank authorizes a net price to..and you will never know the price...you just will know a "approved" or "denied" response from them =0)

Veruska, you have some good answers here but I want to make sure you are not mislead. Negotiating a shortsale is a lot of work but it is not a full time job, If an agent has done them before they could work on a lot of them at the same time.

Some of the deal is in the person you chose but almost all of it is in the package that they prepare, very little must be said to the bank if the package is put together well.

Hi,

It's all in the way it's handled! I really don't want my buyers to work on short sales unless we can get the listing agent to agree to some of our terms. First....if they don't have a specific negotiator, I want my escrow person on it. And I only want to offer if they are willing to open escrow with our offer and only send our offer to the bank. Sure...sometimes the bank comes back and asks if there are other offers....but more often, they just say yes or no to us. It goes pretty fast.

Our market mostly has short sales and bank-owned...but most agents who are still out there are getting pretty good at it. I'm sure your agent is on top of this!

K

well it seems that the sellers agent had to get the payoff on the 1st mortgage, since the property has a 1st and 2nd mortgage and the listing agent is sending it to her short sale negotiator ( i guess he is negotiating it with the bank). URGGGGH! These short sales are such a pain but it seems that any property I go towards is a short sale with todays market.....

I personally have tried a short sale negotiating company which my seller selected. They charged alot of money but in the end I did most of the work. I also know someone who used an attorney that stated he did it, and in the end, the seller , a realtor, did most of the work. I have just been doing the work myself, I feel like I'm more informed about what is going on and at the final stage am more aggressive about getting the deal done. You need alot of tenacity and knowledge to get the short sales closed. So far i have been successful.

Hi Veruska,

Yes if there is a third party short sale negotiator, it's someone who is working on behalf of the seller to work with the bank. It's really more of a coordinator position. It's important to maintain contact with the bank as the process goes along and to develop a relationship with the bank representative. I don't think that agents are the best to do this....as listing agent, I have an escrow officer who has a representative in her office who does this for us. I find this works very well, since alot of the items requested by the bank do come from escrow. And then they are completely ready to go once the approval comes in. And she does not charge me anything for this service....but I give her lots of business too. I am averaging 45 days start to finish. I'm also finding that often I can use them when I represent the buyer as well. Many listing agents do not have the experience to work a short sale successfully and are happy to have me take that part over for them.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other questions.

Karen http://www.great-western-realty.com

I agree with Penny's answer below. Unfortunately, there are many agents trying to sell homes via the short sale process who have no idea how to evaluate the Sellers situation to see if s/he will actually qualify for a short sale and then, once an offer comes in, are not able to effectively present a package to the bank or negotiate the best terms for the Seller. This results in many Buyers waiting in anticipation for several months, only to get a "no" at the end of the process.

We use the services of a short sale negotiator who has been in the business since the last time the real market took a turn for the worse and who has sucessfully evaluated and negotiated 1000+ short sale transactions and, yes, we have the short sale approval letters to prove it! Our negotiator interacts directly with the bank's representatives to get the deal approved - a full time job that can not effectively be done by an agent unless that one transaction is all s/he is focusing on.

As a Seller, a succesful short sale offers relief to the stress of having to go through a foreclosure or the potential future financial impacts of doing a loan modification. As a Buyer, some of the best deals on the market result from a successful short sale. However, both Buyers and Sellers have to make sure there is qualified and experienced representation on both sides of the transaction if they are to achieve their ultimate goals.

Hello,
I can tell you that I wouldn't even try to do a short sale deal without using a faciliator (mitigation specialist) the person I work my deals with has connections with the proper people within the bank who owns the property. She can almost tell you before you submitt the package of whether the bank/banks will accept the offer. So when you're wanting to write a contract make sure your agent works with a faciliator. It will cost you a little bit of money but it is worth it.

I hope this helps. Happy house buying... Penny

I am not sure what you are referring to when you write "short sale negotiator". That's what we call the person at the bank that negotiates the short sale. If you are referring to the agent or person that represents the seller than yes we (as agents) deal directly with the bank.
If this did not answer your questions please feel welcome to contact us.

Jeff and Cheryl Fox

Properties Plus
818-995-9108 Office
800-917-8080 Toll Free
818-207-2013 Cell
Email: mail@jeffandcherylfox.com
Webstie: http://www.jeffandcherylfox.com

16133 Ventura Blvd. 7th Floor
Encino, CA 91436

Veruska,

In the simplest of terms, a Short Sale Negotiator (on the seller's side of the transaction is typically the Listing Agent) negotiates with the current mortgage holder for a "Short Payoff". For example, if you own a property and have a mortgage of $500,000 and that property is listed for sale and receives an offer of "true market value" of $300,000 - the short sale negotiator (or Listing Agent) negotiates with the bank to accept that offer and close the transaction.

100% of my business this past year has been Listing Short Sale Properties. I've had a successful track record of getting short sales accepted and closed - even in the most difficult circumstances such as 1, 2 or 3 loans on the property. It's tricky and there's a science to getting it done.

Best of luck and call if you need more help!

Thom Colby
Broker & Realtor
Southern CA
949-887-5500 - OC
562-422-4000 - LA