The Watson Group Realty

The Short Sale

Did you know that there are actually options available to you should you find yourself in the situation of being unable to continue to pay your mortgage loan but you need to sell you home, and your home is worth less on the market than you owe?

One of these options is a Short Sale, which occurs when a lender agrees to accept less than the actual balance of the loan as payment in full, allowing you, the homeowner to get out of the property and start over.

Why are banks willing to do this? Because the alternative is foreclosure, and the foreclosure process is usually far more expensive than the discount that lenders take on a Short Sale.

How the Short Sale Affects Your Credit

What happens to your credit as a result of this, you may ask? In almost every case we have ever worked, the homeowner walks away from the situation free and clear with no further damage to their credit beyond the effect of the late or missed payments that led up to the situation.

The bottom-line: a Short Sale proves to be a "win-win" solution for everyone involved.

How Do We Get Paid?

In the Short Sale transaction, we primarily act as the real estate agent, which enables us to be the liaison between you, the homeowner and your bank, as well as all other parties in the transaction. For this service, the bank pays us a commission on behalf of the homeowner. The homeowner doesn't pay us anything!

Are we Investors?

So you might wonder, since we are also Investors, why don't we actually purchase these properties as investments, since we could buy them at a discount. Well, as any smart investor knows, to make an investment worthwhile, the property must be purchased at no more than 65-70% of its after-repair-value. Generally, in a Short Sale, unless the property is in horrific condition, the bank will not discount the loan below 75-85% of its appraised value.

Since 95% of the calls we get come from first-time homebuyers who have bought brand new homes in the last 2-5 years, the banks simply cannot discount the property enough for it to qualify as an investment opportunity for us.

When we first started our Short Sale business, our primary objective was to purchase investment properties through this process. We quickly learned, however, that it was like looking for a needle in a haystack to find a good investment candidate.

We Knew We Could Help

We began to realize, however, that we could develop a business helping homeowners get through this process and walk away from a potentially devastating situation with hope, our focus quickly shifted to simply offering our services as real estate agents. Furthermore, because so few real estate professionals have the information and experience to help their clients navigate this process, we have dedicated ourselves to providing a professional service to distressed homeowners in the Houston community. - Fri Jan 9 2009, 21:20