Even if all you do is list properties for sale and list short sales among those you need to have a strong purchase money lender on your speed dial. No mortgage broker here I’m talking about a money lender that can work quickly on files and do their underwriting in house. The reason the is so important was reminded to me just last week.
After months of negotiating a short sale and getting it fully approved and deficiencies waived the buyer’s loan was falling apart. While not our client of course we hold an interest in having them approved and at the closing table. Our initial attempts to get them to change to our lender fell on deaf ears and the mortgage broker had the file reassigned to another resource. A week later, strike two. The loan was denied and all on some truly superficial underwriting issues.
At this time the buyer in desperation finally allows us to step in an offer our Lender as a resource. The short sale approval letter was already extended twice and the short sale lender was stating no more extensions. So potentially we are out of time. But our relationship with this money lender and knowing their integrity and work ethic allowed us to save this at the 11th hour. Not only did they get it done they were able to do it in just 8-days!
Some short sale agents do take it a step further and it is worth considering. When listing short sales it would be intelligent to require that the buyer also be pre-qualified with your lender. While they can still use their preferred lender this way you have a backup in place in case things start to go south. But note that in a market where getting buyers or buyer interest can be challenging this additional requirement can sometimes scare buyers away.
