Short Sales: How to Deal with Rejection

Buying houses by means of a short sale can be a great way to make significant amounts of money, but they're not for everyone. You have to find a seller who will work with you to persuade the lender to sell the home rather than allowing the foreclosure process to continue. Then you have to submit an offer that's low enough to make a profit, yet not so low as to be rejected altogether.

If a lender does reject your offer, all isn't lost. The first thing to do is to try to determine why your offer was rejected. There are many possible reasons, and if you want the sale to go through, you must job find out exactly what the lender wants in order to make the sale happen. Here are possible reasons.

First, your offer may simply have been too low, which meant the lender would be taking too big of a hit by accepting it. They also may believe they can do better once the foreclosure has been completed, or since loans are often sold to investors, it's also possible that the holder of the note wouldn't accept the loss.

Perhaps the borrower's financial difficulty wasn't stated strongly enough to make a persuasive case for a short sale. If that's the case, the lender might want to work out an alternative payment schedule with the homeowners rather than entering into a short sale.

Since most lenders will require a broker's price opinion (BPO), make sure your offer is somewhere near that figure. Otherwise, a lender will be convinced that they can do better on the open market once the foreclosure is complete.

There may be other reasons, but the number one reason short sale offers are rejected is simply because they're too low. After all, lenders are in business to make a profit, and even when appears there's no profit to be made in a particular home; they want to cut their losses as much as possible. So don't get greedy. You'll rarely be able to steal a home, but you can often get a substantially lower price than you would on the open market.

One of the best ways to avoid coming in too low is simply to ask the lender how much they hope to net from a short sale. They may not tell you, but you'll never know if you don't ask. Even if you don't get an answer in the beginning, you'll have another chance to ask before they make a counteroffer. Be courteous, but emphasize that you're really hoping to make the sale happen. Again, you may be surprised by the figure you receive, and if it's acceptable, jump on it. Don't kill your sale by being too greedy.

If your short sale offer is rejected, don't give up. Probe for more information about why your offer didn't fly and then try to satisfy whatever they ask for before making your counteroffer. You won't be stealing the home, but there's often plenty of profit to be made.

Copyright ? 2006 Jeanette J. Fisher

Learn how to fix houses for flipping or higher rent with the Design Psychology edge.

Author Jeanette Fisher teaches interior design psychology, home staging, and real estate investing.

http://www.doghousetodollhouse.com

Tennessee Home Buying

Maybe you?re buying your first home in Tennessee, or perhaps you?re relocating to Tennessee from another state. Either way, it?s important that you educate yourself on Tennessee home loans before shopping for a home and mortgage. This article explains what you?ll need to know before buying a home in Tennessee:

The price of homes in Tennessee varies widely between zip codes. For example, in Nashville, Tennessee, the median price of a home in the summer of 2005 was $209,000; however, the median price of a home in Knoxville, Tennessee, was $175,000. Overall, the median price of a home in Tennessee in between July 2004 and July 2005 was $166,400.

Tennessee has a very active housing market, and home prices in Tennessee appreciate at a rate comparable to the national average. Between July 2004 and July 2005, home prices in Nashville, Tennessee, rose by 9.5% from the previous year. However, the rate of job growth in Tennessee during the same year was only half of the average national job growth rate.

Many Tennessee organizations banded together to create the Tennessee Home of Your Own Program -- a program to help people with disabilities purchase their own home. Through this program, Tennessee residents with disabilities can get technical assistance with the home-buying process and assistance with down payment and closing costs. Additionally, this program offers home-ownership classes to people with disabilities.

Before closing on the purchase or sale of a home in Tennessee, buyers and sellers need to be aware of a Tennessee law that prohibits the use of personal checks in amounts greater than $1000 for costs associated with loan closing. If loan-closing costs are going to be greater than $1000, the buyer or seller will have to pay by a cashier?s check, wire transfer, or cash.

Jessica Elliott recommends that you visit Mortgage Lenders Plus.com for more information about Tennessee Mortgage Rates and Loans.

How Much Equity Does Your Home Have?

When it comes to real estate, there are few things more important than equity. All of the advice given to first-time homebuyers centers on how much equity they are likely to build in the time they will be living in the home. Additionally, when it comes to getting a home equity loan or selling the house, knowing how much equity you have built up is quite important. It will determine how much cash you end up with. And that is no small consideration.

A Definition of Equity

Most of the time, equity refers to the amount of ?ownership? you have in a particular piece of real estate. A set amount of cash is the main expression of the equity in your property. Equity is usually built by a combination of two things:

1. Making mortgage payments
2. Increases in the property?s value

The longer you have the real estate, and make payments on it, the more equity you are going to build up in the property. And if you live in an area where the home values are increasing, you will find that helps with your equity as well. This is the reason that the general advice is to buy only if you plan to stay in a home for at least five years. This gives the property time to appreciate, and it allows you the time to pay down some of your property loan?s principal.

Determining Your Real Estate?s Equity

It is usually very simple to figure out how much equity you have built in your real estate. First, you need to find out what the current market value of your home is. You can do this by talking to a variety of real estate agents, mortgage loan officers, and appraisers. Next, you subtract the amount that you still owe from the market value of your home. The result is your equity. Here?s an example:

You bought your home 11 years ago with a loan for $115,000. Now, however, the property at current market value is worth $135,000. And you have paid down some of your loan, still owing about $75,000. To figure your equity, you subtract the $75,000 from the $135,000 for a total of $60,000. This is about how much you could expect to pocket if you sold the home at current market value, or the amount of money you would have access to with a home equity line.

Visit Home Equity Wise to view our Recommended Home Equity Lenders online. Also, visit Home Equity Wise to find information about obtaining a Home Equity Loan Online.

Home Staging Can Help You Sell Your House Quickly

Real estate prices have hit record levels in the United States during the last five years. In some parts of the country, prices have tripled. For those selling houses in the first half of the decade, business was very good, indeed. Rising interest rates and sticker shock have slowed the market down, however. In some parts of the country that used to be hot, sales have slowed to a crawl. In those markets, people who want to sell houses are now waiting months when homes used to sell in days or weeks. What can a homeowner who wishes to sell as quickly as possible do to accelerate the process?

A relatively new service called home staging may be the answer. Staging a home essentially means setting it up so that it makes its best possible presentation to the market. Professional home stagers will, for a fee, come to your house, examine your property, and make recommendations as to what you might do in order to make the house as sale-friendly as possible. In some cases, they will simply recommend a coat of paint, a bit of landscaping, or some new drapes. In other cases, more dramatic help may be needed.

It is often difficult to sell a home that has been vacant for a while. Buyers have a hard time imagining what their belongings might look like in an empty house. A good staging company will have in their inventory a selection of different types of furniture, lamps, decorative accessories and more so that a vacant home can look like a showcase. A fully and tastefully decorated home is much easier to sell than a vacant one.

The service isn?t necessarily inexpensive. Homeowners might expect to pay several hundred dollars for an initial consultation as well as a fee of several times that amount for the first month of a fully furnished, professionally decorated home. Rates for subsequent months tend to be lower than for the initial month, but many homes that have been professionally staged aren?t on the market much longer than a month. In fact, studies have shown that staged homes often sell in half of the time of other comparable properties.

Having your home professionally decorated in order to sell it isn?t something that everyone needs to do. But in markets with slowing real estate sales, staging a home may be the difference between selling the house this week and selling it three months from now. For many sellers, the investment is more than worthwhile.

?Copyright 2006 by Retro Marketing. Charles Essmeier is the owner of Retro Marketing, a firm devoted to informational Websites, including http://www.HomeEquityHelp.net, a site devoted to information regarding home equity loans, mortgages and lines of credit.