Short sales are not the option

I have recently been dealing with more and more short sales and let me tell you they are not a good option for any of the parties involved, unless you have nothing but time and money I would pass on short sales.

The sellers side:

The nit pick every single area of your life the normally want to see bank statements, tax returns, utility bills, credit scores, hardship letters and probably a few unborn kids. The timing is horrible if you want to try and keep a decent credit score you have to keep paying the mortgage but then that makes your hardship look like your lying, once you have the offer it could take as long as 6-9 months for it to close. Overall it is and should be a very last resort to foreclosure in some cases foreclosure is way less stress just walk away and don't finance any real estate for the next 7 years.

The buyers side:

Most of the time investors are the people who want to buy short sales but the good question is why? The average short sale takes 6 months to close and if your like me I am always looking at other properties to buy and I would probably end up missing out on properties because I would be holding the funds to buy this property hoping it closes earlier then 6 months. I have also seen some bad things happen to investors when trying to buy a short sale, I was the listing agent on a short sale and we had an offer that had been accepted by the bank. 2 weeks before closing I get an email from the bank that they decided to put it up for auction on auction.com and see if they can get the price higher, the buyers agent told me her client is not interested in watching the auction and they after 6 months lost out on the property because someone bided $500 more. Just be careful when focusing on buying a short sale because the banks can do whatever they want and do not care about you as the buyer.

The agents side:

What a pain it is for an agent to sell a short sale, it takes extra paperwork your clients are always upset that the process isn't going quicker even though we tell them it could take 6-9 months once we get an offer. At the end of it we get very minimal commission compared to normal transactions, the last two that closed for me I bet I made less then minimum wage if I added up the hours I put in on them.

Overall short sales do have a place because of our economy but if you ask me 99 times out of 100 they are probably not worth the time or hassle, buyer beware it might seem like a great way to go but be careful.

Happy hump day folks!