Short Selling with equity.

[Reginald Guercin]

Hey BP, 

 What if the home owner only owe 50K and the property is worth 150k so he has equity of 100K. Can you offer 100K to short sale the property and will the bank accept it?

[William Murrell]

Step one: in a true short sale you can offer whatever you want at any time, but whether or not they accept it is another issue entirely. But anyway, if they owe 50k and you offer 100k, that is not a short sale.  You're offering more than is owed to the bank.  It's a short sale when you offer less than is owed, not less than what it's worth.  Now if you offered 30k and expected the bank to take less than the 50k they're owed, now that would be a short sale.  In this case, the bank won't care because they'll get paid their 50k out of the proceeds of the sale.