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6 Tips for Buying a Home in a Short Sale

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By: G. M. Filisko
By preparing for a real estate short sale, you can emerge with a great home at a favorable price.

Short sales can be lengthy and difficult, but if you know what you’re doing, you can end up with a great deal. Image: fotog/Getty Images

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 When sellers need to sell their home for less than they owe on their mortgage, they’re shooting for a short sale. Short sale homes can sometimes be bargains, but only if you do your homework, stay patient, and remain unemotional during the sometimes lengthy and difficult short sale process.

Here are six tips for protecting yourself emotionally and financially when bidding on a short sale.

1. Get help from a short sale expert

A real estate agent experienced in short sales can identify which homes are being offered as short sales, help you determine a purchase price, and advise you on what to include in your offer to make the lender view it favorably. Ask agents how many buyers they’ve represented in short sales and, of those, how many successfully closed the transaction.

2. Build a team

Ask agents to recommend real estate attorneys knowledgeable in short sales and title experts. A title officer can do a title search to identify all the liens attached to a property you’re interested in. Because each lienholder must consent to a short sale, a property with multiple liens, like first and second mortgages, mechanic’s and condominium liens, or homeowners association liens, will be harder to purchase.

A title search may cost $250 to $300 up front, but it can help weed out less desirable properties requiring multiple approvals.

3. Know the home’s fair market value

By agreeing to a short sale, lenders are consenting to lose money on the loan they made to the sellers to purchase the home. Their goal is to keep those losses as low as possible. If your offer is dramatically less than the home’s fair market value, it may be rejected. Your agent can help you identify the price that’s good for you. The lender will determine whether approval is in its best interest.

4. Expect delays

There are two stages to a short sale. First, the sellers must consent to your purchase offer. Then they must submit it to their lender, along with documentation to convince the lender to agree to the sale.

The lender approval process can take weeks or months, even longer if the lender counteroffers. Expect bigger delays if several lienholders are involved; each can make a counteroffer or reject your offer.

5. Firm up your financing

Lenders will weigh your ability to close the transaction. If you’re preapproved for a mortgage, have a large downpayment, and can close at any time, they’ll consider your offer stronger than that of a buyer whose financing is less secure.

6. Avoid contingencies

If you must sell your current home before you can close on the short-sale property, or you need to close by a firm deadline, your offer may present too many moving parts for a lender to approve it.

Also, consider ordering an inspection so you’re fully informed about the home. Keep in mind that lenders are unlikely to approve an offer seeking repairs or credits for such work. You’ll probably have to purchase the home “as is,” which means in its present condition.

This article includes general information about tax laws and consequences, but isn’t intended to be relied upon by readers as tax or legal advice applicable to particular transactions or circumstances. Consult a tax professional for such advice; tax laws may vary by jurisdiction.

More from HouseLogic

What you need to know about the homebuyer tax credit

How to claim your homebuyer tax credit

Other web resources

Real-life discussions of short sales

G.M. Filisko is an attorney and award-winning writer who luckily has avoided the need for a short sale on her properties. A frequent contributor to many national publications including Bankrate.com, REALTOR® Magazine, and the American Bar Association Journal, she specializes in real estate, business, personal finance, and legal topics.

“Visit HouseLogic.com for more articles like this. Reprinted from HouseLogic.com with permission of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®.”

Read more: http://buyandsell.houselogic.com/articles/6-tips-buying-home-short-sale/#ixzz36t28OOhJ
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7 Landscaping Mistakes That Wreck Curb Appeal

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By: Lisa Kaplan Gordon

Don’t let badly designed or maintained landscaping wreck your home’s curb appeal. Here are pitfalls to avoid.

 Clumsy, neglected, and hodgepodge landscaping not only hurts your home’s curb appeal, it can cut the value of your property and make it harder to sell.

Real estate appraisers say bad landscaping is a buyer turnoff that can increase the number of days a property languishes on the market, which also hurts prices.

“I’ve been with clients who won’t even go into a house because of the bad landscaping outside,” says Mack Strickland, a Chester, Va., REALTOR® and appraiser.

Even more important, bad landscaping is a downer that hurts the way you see and enjoy your home.

Don’t let bad landscaping happen to you.  Here are the seven landscaping mistakes that bust, rather than boost, your home’s curb appeal.

1. Planting Without A Plan

Some landscaping choices, such as a line of begonias, will last a season; others, like trees, can last a lifetime. So, take time to plan and plot a yard that gives you maximum enjoyment and curb appeal.

For the design challenged, landscape architects are worth the investment ($300-$2,500 depending on yard size). They will render elevations of your future yard, and provide plant lists so you can install landscaping yourself.

Related: How to Create a Landscaping Plan on a Budget

2. Too Much Togetherness

Yes, planting in clusters looks way better than installing single plants, soldier-like, throughout your yard. But make sure your groups of perennials, shrubs, and trees have plenty of room to spread, or they’ll look choked and overgrown. Also, over-crowded landscaping competes with itself for food and water, putting the clusters at risk, especially during drought.

Google how high and wide the mature plant will be, and then combine that info with the spacing suggestions on planting labels. At first, garden beds of young plants will look too airy and prairie-like. But within three years, your beds will fill in with room to grow.

Remember: First year it sleeps, second it creeps, third it leaps.

3. Zoning Out

Don’t be seduced by catalog plants that look gorgeous on paper but aren’t suited to your hardiness zone. You’ll wind up with plants that die prematurely, or demand winter covers, daily watering, and other intensive efforts to keep them alive and well.

Check plant labels to see which hardiness zones are best for your plants.

4. More of the Same

Resist the design temptation to carpet-bomb your yard with your favorite plant or shrub, which will create a boring, monochromatic landscape. Worse, your yard will look great when your fave flowers bloom, then will look drab the rest of the year.

Mix things up and strive for four-season color. For example, combine spring-blooming azaleas with summer-blooming roses and autumn-blazing shrubs — such as burning bushes (Euonymus alatus). For winter color, try the red osier dogwood (Cornus stolonifera), a hardy shrub that sports bright-red branches in winter.

Related:

9 Winter Plants that Dazzle Even in Snow

Winter Gardening: Plants that Provide Beauty All Year Round

5. Refusing to Bury Your Dead

Nothing wrecks curb appeal faster than rows of dead or dying shrubs and perennials. So quickly remove your dearly departed landscaping from your front and side yards.

Spent plants that lived their natural lives are good candidates for a compost pile — if you grind them first, they’ll decompose faster. But if your landscaping succumbed to disease or infestation, it’s best to inter them in black plastic bags, then add to the trash.

6. Weeds Gone Wild

Weeds not only wreck the look of your landscaping, they compete with pricey vegetation for water and food. Weeds also can shorten the life of brick, stone, and pavers by growing in mortar cracks.

The best way to stop weeds is to spread a pre-emergent about three weeks before weed seeds typically germinate. If you can’t stop them from growing, at least get rid of weeds before they flower and send a zillion weed seeds throughout your yard.

7. Contain Those Critters

Deer, rabbits, and other backyard pests think your landscaping is an all-you-can eat buffet, leaving you with denuded branches and topless perennials.

If you’ve got a critter problem:

  • Plant deer- or rabbit-resistant varieties. Your local extension agent can provide a list of green things critters won’t eat in your area.
  • Install an electric fence around landscaping you want to protect.
  • Spray plants with critter repellent. After a hard rain, spray again.

Related:

Flower Garden Mistakes to Avoid

Does Landscaping Give a Good Return on Investment?

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“Visit HouseLogic.com for more articles like this. Reprinted from HouseLogic.com with permission of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®.”

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Owning A Home: A Noble Goal

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Are you currently renting or living with family or friends, but want to buy a home? This is a noble goal to have. As a REALTOR®, I would be happy to help you execute a plan to put yourself in a position to be a first time home buyer. This is something I have experienced, and would love to help you experience as well.

Currently in the real estate market we are seeing an increase in listings, but not an increase in qualified buyers and renters. The economy has not been kind in the past 5 years, and many individuals have impaired credit. Criteria for qualifying for a mortgage has been strengthened due to the problems seen over the past 5 years with people getting mortgages they could not sustain due to lax mortgage underwriting. In a nutshell, it is a bit harder to qualify for a mortgage than it used to be.

If you find yourself in this position, do not despair! You can realize the dream of home ownership. The first step to qualifying for a mortgage is to know where your credit stands. You can obtain your credit reports annually without charge at https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action. You can also monitor changes in your credit scores for free at www.creditkarma.com.

Once you obtain your reports, review them carefully. Are there inaccuracies? Are there accounts listed that do not belong to you? You can dispute errors on your credit report. For more information on how to do that see: http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0151-disputing-errors-credit-reports. for a printable brochure on disputing your credit report information see this link: http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/pdf-0038-how-to-dispute-credit-errors.pdf.

Once you have disputed inaccuracies, set up a plan to pay all delinquencies off, bring all past-due accounts current, and ensure that all bills are paid on time for the next 12 months. This will require discipline, and may require adjusting your lifestyle so that you can live well within your means. The key to success is keeping your eye on the prize. You want to improve your credit so you can buy a home, car, or other item and you do not want to continue to pay more interest for credit and loans than folks with good credit do. You will increase your buying power and save money now and over time by focusing on repairing your credit.

Review your living situation, bills, entertainment expenses, dining out expenses – all variable expenses and see if you can live more cheaply, and use the savings to repay debts and pay bills on time. Also think about starting or expanding a savings account. You will need some savings to purchase a home, so you should start now planning how you can save painlessly. Can you increase 401k contributions? Does your bank have a “keep the change” function that helps you automatically save? Can you give up one luxury and save that exact amount every week or every month?

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Home ownership has it’s advantages. There are tax breaks, the ability to decorate your living space without restrictions, the ability to build equity, and the fact that most home owners have a higher net worth than most renters. Add to that the fact that you can own a home for less than rent, and you have many good reasons to make home ownership a goal for quality living.

Ready to buy, sell, or rent, or ready to plan to do so? Give me a call at 540-710-4205. I have mortgage lenders who will help you get pre-approved, and then we can go shopping for your home!

Know someone who is ready to buy or sell or needs to plan to do so? – Give them my number or my email: MichelleSmithRealtor@gmail.com. I can help them plan no matter where they live in the world. I can also help them execute the transaction if they are within the state of Virginia. If they are in another state, or another country, I will  or refer them to a local agent in our network.

Best Regards,

Michelle Olivia Smith

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