All Forum Posts by: Michael G.

This clause was in a memo sent to me from Litton.

1.) Arm’s Length Clause - “Seller and buyer each represent that the sale is an “arm’s length†transaction and the seller and buyer are unrelated to each other by family marriage or commercial enterprise. The buyer agrees not to sell the property within 90 days of closing of this sale.â€

Is that going to prevent me from doing a double close or is that meant for FHA buyers due to 90 day seasoning on FHA loans?

Has any investor ever been questioned by the lender about what their role is is the short sale? Clearly I'm an investor who submitted the authorization to release form. Sometimes one of the phone reps will ask "Are you the realtor"? or " Are you the attorney"? I always just say "I'm helping out the homeowner". Has anyone EVER revealed or been asked if they are the investor? I would never say that I am but I'm just wondering about different responses to use if it ever should arise.

Thanks Mary Ann - You are correct. I am the investor. Ive learned that maintaining control in any transaction is key to its success. I've tried to do that here. I found the seller when the house was vacant,found the realtor (maybe the wrong one), paired the seller and the realtor to get the listing agreement signed. gained access to the house. made sure to follow up with the seller to get the tax returns in. I took my foot off the gas since the realtor said the sellers attorney would handle the negotiation and subsequently the process seems to have slowed to a virtual crawl. I'm with you on the whole drive by BPO thing. Good suggestion on the once a week communication. I'll take it. The sellers attorney is supposed to be handling the negotiation so she might take issue with speaking directly to me. However ,I can stay in touch with the realtor to determine status and get updates from the sellers attornry. I'll regroup and keep my foot on the gas until we finish the race. Thanks again.

Thanks for the replies. They all have useful content. As you can see in the "How to Submit A Short Sale Package" blog, Bill and Jackie are realtors as well as investors and they are deeply involved in the whole process. Thats what I expected from my realtor. To kind of hold my hand and walk me through. I'll work through it but I was just dissapointed in her lack of involvement and aloofness.

The lender I'm working with on a short sale said they would just go with an exterior BPO I'm not sure if that's a good thing. Especially considering the fact that the lender rep told me the exterior BPO came back at $100K more than the listing price.

I sent the rep a response that basically says the realtor has comps showing several properties, that were in the same condition, in a 1 mile sq area that are in the 119K range and that the price is not abnormal for the area.

The realtor can certainly produce the comps if needed. I just dont know how to manuever if the lender gets stuck on this high appraisal that came back with the exterior BPO.

Do send the lender the comps? Do request another BPO making sure the realtor is on-site with the comps?

I wanted to get a general idea out there what the role of the realtor is during the short sale process besides the listing of the property?

I'm working with a realtor on a short sale and she doesn't seem to be very proactive or involved in the process. I always have to call her and ask what's going on. I told her that she was put on the authorization to release information form so I figured she would take the bull by the horns and get down to it. Not the case.

We had a BPO cancelled on the subject property due to a snowstorm. I called the realtor to ask her was the BPO re-scheduled. She said she was waiting for them to call her to get it rescheduled. A few days later I called again to see if the reschedule date had been set. She responded that the attorney has to set the reschedule date since she's handling the short sale.

I eventually called the lender and asked for a re-schedule of the BPO. The lender responded that they would just go with an exterior BPO. (Not sure if that's a good thing, more about that in another post).

Maybe I set my expectations to high regarding the realtors role in the process. I did the basics. (Find the seller, get them to sign a listing agreement with the realtor, schedule a BPO, etc.) I never took a short sale course. I don't know the fine points of short sale execution from start to finish.
I just know that I have 2 of them currently on my table and I'm doing the best I can to make it to the end with out mucking it up.

I would just like some feedback from you guys about realtor involvement vs investor involvement vs attorney involvement in the process.

-Mike

Robert - You posted this in the Rental Property Questions and Landlording Issues. Are you looking to wholesale rental properties specifically? Did you look at the Wholesaling Forum? For rental properties I would look for desirable places for renters to live. Of course everybody has to live somewhere but war zone properties are probably much harder to wholesale than blue collar working class neighborhoods. I would look for properties that are near major shopping centers especially Walmarts. Walmart apparently never builds in a place where the surrounding working class economics wont support it. For owner occupied single family residences its really kind of a simple cookie cutter approach. 3/2's with garages in nice working class neighborhoods seem to be the sweet spot for most wholesalers I talk to.

I dont. In fact I rarely find trusts when I'm searching the records. They are few and far between.

I wish my county was like Edwards. My county makes you come to the courthouse. They says its not available online. (although looking at their technology infrastructure I could probably access it if I worked for the county. Its not that unsophisticated. They just dont want the public accessing it I guess.) Whats nice is that you can do wildcard searches on properties. For instance Last name starts with A. Date of death range 12/01/2010 - 1/3/2011. I just go from A-Z every 30 days. I make a note of where I left off last so I'm not wasting my time doing redundant searches.They charge 25 cents a page for printouts. Ive learned to look for a) the ones that dont look like husband and wife where the survivor is still living at the property and make sure none of the admistrators are living at the property. b) To look instantly for the ones that have real estate listed as assets c) The ones that don't have a lot of people listed as heirs. To answer your questions.

1. If there's no Real Property listed under "Nature of Assets" I dont bother with it. IMHO it seems like a waste of time vs the records that have property listed as assets.

2. I've never contatcted the the Attorney for Petitioner only because I've never had a need. I only contact the person who the Letters of Administration have been issued to.

3. I've been actively pursuing probate for about a year. Ive found that if I wait to long (typically past 45 days), the administrators instanly go with what they know which is to list the property with an agent. I search for deaths within the last 30 - 45 days. When I have an address I'm intrested in, I will google it to determine if its been listed already. There have been a few properties I've come across that really get my attention (1-10 miles away) and I drive by to see if its my kind of property (ugly, not well maintained or needs work) and when I pull up and there is a realtor sign in yard. Or I call an executor and they say those properties have been sold.(ouch). BTW - I found that calling after sending a letter works well. That way its not quite a cold call

I'm in NY. I've tried this in a county in PA and you cant do any searches without a name. In another county in NY they list the deaths in the local law journal so you may want to try that but that did cost me money so you have to weigh if it will work for you or if it even exists where you are.

Just keep in mind that more is better. The response rate (at least for me) is not that high. The ones that do respond most frequently Ive found are condo owners (which I dont prefer), Also there is a challenge with getting to that 65-70 % of ARV sweetspot. My huge selling point is I buy cash, AS IS, in 10-14 days with no inspections, no contingencies. That seems to get their attention.

A bit wordy but I hope this helps a bit.

Thats really good and useful informatio...Thanks. I have the same cross selling spammers sending me e-mails when I post ads on CL but it does help me build a buyers list. Bandit signs are so costly they dont provide a good ROI for the amount of leads they produce. Every time they disappear I say thats another 2 bucks down the drain.I'm curious though...other than posting an ad on Craigslist for a property that may or may not exist how do you market for buyers to build your buyers list? Is your buyers list 20, 50, or 100 strong in terms of go to, reliable buyers?