I have been bombarded with Short sale listings this year as well as buyers wanting to buy a short sale.  Just a couple of years ago I expressed to my Real Estate croanies that I was sure not going to do short sales.  Well I have certainly changed my tune as so many of our sales are short and foreclosure sales.  I guess I would have been out of business if I had stuck to my guns.  I actually, in a crazy kind of way, enjoy doing them because I know that at the end of the day it is something that really helps my customers.

Please be leery of short sale negotiators that call you up and offer to get you out of your upside down home situation for a fee.  I am not saying that all are illigitimate and I am sure there are some great ones.  After I had a less than stellar experience with a short sale specialist there was an article in Realtor magazine warning against such practices.

According to Realtor magazine, “Companies that specialize in managing short sales promise to focus on the complicated details of the short sale freeing up the agent’s time to find buyers.  But if you take a hands off approach, you can be charged with negligence if a deal falls apart.  A lot  of these companies are fly’by night or have one person who’s overworked.  Agents are coming back a month later to find that no one has even opened the file.

So long story short… no pun intended, just hire your Realtor and trust her to take care of your short sale.  You should NEVER have to hire someone and pay them to do what you Realtor is trained to do for you.  Your Realtor also has the pulse on the values and the ins and outs of getting a short sale through.