Short Sale Needed in SW Florida?

Short Sale Needed in SW Florida?

Short Sale or Coming to Closing with Funds to Close?

Ah,no one wants to be upside down when selling a house but that’s exactly what we have been starting to see here in SW Florida. The real estate market continues to shift and we are finding more and more sellers who need to sell looking at having to bring money to the closing table in order to pay off their mortgage (s) & closing costs.

Some of our sellers have been really close to needing to come up with funds but the ones who purchased in the last peak are often times having to come up with funds to close. 

It’s not great but when you are faced with having to sell – maybe for needed space, a job, or something sad like a divorce or death you have to do what you have to do.

What are you options?

Well, while we are real estate professionals our real guidance can only be to help you navigate listing your home, pricing & positioning strategies and discussing a short sale if that is a necessary option. For other options you’d need to speak with your accountant or attorney (we are neither of those). Another option is to hold the property – even if you must move & you could rent it out. We can run numbers for you but again, like the sales market the rental market is also currently saturated as well. 

Do you qualify for a short sale?

You might. Banks have different criteria for whether or not they’ll approve a short sale. What exactly is a short sale you might ask? A short sale is simply when you bank/lender agrees to allow you to sell your home for less (sales price minus costs to sell) than the current mortgage amount. It means they take less than their official pay off amount. Why would they do that? Well, for the most part banks don’t want to be in the home ownership game. They are more into loaning money and earning money from interest paid. So if you can no longer afford to pay on your house they’d rather see most or some of their money returned than to have to go through the added expense of a foreclosure and dealing with holding costs and the eventual sale of your home should you default. Now, if you are current on your home a short sale may be tougher but it is possible. In the past (2007-2017) I worked with hundreds of SW Florida home owners in similar positions. Many were behind on their payments with the bank but some were current. The bank would consider a short sale if the home owner had an extenuating hardship that looked like they would eventually be unable to afford their mortgage payments. Maybe a job loss or decrease in pay/hours, maybe a divorce or death or perhaps a job transfer or other emergency. You can always ask. Or we can ask for you. There’s a lot of paperwork that you’ll have to provide in order to see if you would be approved for a short sale but it may be worth it. In most cases the bank will provide you with a full deficiency waiver which means you do not have to pay back any of the short fall on your upside down loan when you complete a successful short sale. I did have some customers with great credit and assets where the bank required some additional promissory note in conjunction with agreeing to a short sale but you are under no obligation to accept those terms. But keep in mind if you are behind on payments that the bank can and will foreclosure which is not ideal. 

So that’s a short synopsis of how the short sale process can work. We don’t have many active short sales on the market right now here in SW Florida but I see more every day. If you have to sell your home in Cape Coral, Ft Myers or surrounding areas and are worried about being upside down we can help you navigate this option. We can’t guarantee anything because ultimately the decision is up to your lender but we have a great track record of helping other people in your similar shoes. 

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