CNBC is reporting that some banks are being accused of, of all things, bank fraud in short sales. Those of us who sell short sales know that the hardest cases are often the ones with subordinate financing, or in layman’s terms, a second mortgage. If you owe $500,000 on a house with a $425,000 1st loan and a $75,000 second mortgage, then a short sale for $400,000 cleans the 2nd loan out completely. If they are lucky, they will get $3000 from the first lender. They have little choice- if the house goes to foreclosure, they get nothing.
ON some files, the 2nd mortgage will try and negotiate an unsecured amount to be paid back by the borrower after the closing in exchange for release of the lien. That is their prerogative. It is, after all, money they are owed.
The fraud part comes when the 2nd lien wants cash paid to them that is not disclosed to the first mortgage holder. In other words, a “side deal” cash payment delivered at closing that is undocumented and not disclosed on the HUD-1 settlement statement.
So instead of Tony Soprano conspiring to defraud the first bank, it is the second bank. Has it happened? I’d say yes. Is it widespread? Hard to tell, probably not, but once is too many times. Does this surprise me? No. These are the institutions that screwed everything up to begin with. Nothing they do surprises me.
There is a new US treasury guideline that will, according to a report, mandate that banks make their decision on a short sale in 10 days. The new rule also proposes a $1500 allowance to the seller for moving expenses. I have said before that it shouldn’t take a lender more time to decide on a short sale than it currently takes to underwrite a mortgage. The process is virtually the same.
As enticing as 10 days sounds, I don’t see how it could be enforced, nor do I see 10 days as particularly realistic. It takes a week for example, to get an appraisal done. The pendulum does not need to swing so far the either way from 4 and 6 month short sales to under 2 weeks. I’d be happy with 30 days, and, frankly, so would the buyers. The banks are overwhelmed as it is, and they don’t have the staffing (or so they claim) to speed things up.
So how will they do it? Will this help or hurt? My fear is that, pressed to make a decision, the lenders will issue denials on deals they might otherwise approve if given a reasonable amount of time.
There is some debate. I don’t think they will, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that they probably fear that if they make them easier, more people will try for one. Since the other side of the deterrent is foreclosure, and since loan modifications aren’t exactly saving the economy, status quo has at least enabled them to repay their TARP money, so why should they change now?
Bottom line: If you need to do a short sale, you still need an expert with experience, and not some guy who attended a seminar once.
Russell Shaw passes on a powerful email being sent to agents on how to deal with Bank of America’s difficulty with short sales- don’t send them any new mortgage business.
Given the number of blogs on the difficulties agents experience on short sales, I thought I’d take another shot at a canard that banks are now using to justify more delays, and that is the following:
“The investor is reviewing the file.”
This is typically followed by 60 days of nothing.
Now, I don’t argue that the investor is reviewing the file, I simply question the wisdom of the investor reviewing one file at a time.
Let’s go back to mortgage 101: when a mortgage application is underwritten, it is reviewed by an underwriter to ensure that it conforms to the standards of the investor, which for example, could be Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Fannie and Freddie then buy these loans by the thousands in bundles. If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac manually reviewed every new mortgage application one at a time we’d just be getting around to closing all the contracts written in 2007. It is utterly absurd for them to do so. Commerce would cease.
An old wrestling teammate from high school referred me to his younger brother, who is also newly married and looking for his first home (Thank you Facebook!). Michael and Stephanie had been out looking for a while, and a prior agent had written an offer for them which didn’t work out. They didn’t have a good experience with this agent. It mattered to them that I was not a random agent, but a referral from a trusted relative.
They are a very earnest couple, and once we found the right place, it turned out to be a short sale. Now, when I represent the buyer I can’t negotiate the short sale. The listing agent did it herself, the seller’s attorney was no help (useless, actually. wouldn’t answer our lawyers calls for days, if that), and it took over 4 months. There were two mortgages, which complicated matters terribly, and the 2nd released the lien but the sellers had to repay some of the loan. This happens sometimes.
Luckily, when the approval came through they had their act together, and were able to close a day ahead of the lender’s deadline. The closing itself was not without drama, as the seller’s attorney was never on point and our lawyer had to do some fast work that morning to make everything come together. The closing lasted 3 1/2 hours. But close it did.
I recall listing my first short sale since the 90’s in 2006. The reaction from both the public and most agents to the term “short sale” was typically one of curiosity and confusion. What is a short sale? How does it work? How long will it take? Is it for real?
Now short sales are so common as to become as normal to real estate vernacular as “appraisal” or “kitchen.” Everyone seems to hear the term, and the explanation now takes 30 seconds instead of 15 minutes. I am currently representing buyers on 1 short sale purchase, have other buyers with a bid on one, and I am brokering almost a dozen on the selling end, which is actually a low number for me. The most expensive is over $700,000; the lowest price is a little over $150,000. Most range between $200,000 and $400,000.
The one thing they all do have in common is financial hardship and an upside down mortgage. Values are falling below mortgage balances and jobs are being lost in this economy. Values will continue to fall as short sales and bank-owned REO foreclosures dominate the sales statistics. If you have a $500,000 house, how can you compete with a $350,000 REO foreclosure down the street? It will be a happy day for this country when short sales become far less common.
For now, however, short sales are as common in New York Real Estate as they have ever been.
J. Philip Faranda is Westchester & the Hudson Valleys’s Premier Short Sale REALTOR. He has listed and sold successful short sales in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Dutchess, and Orange County, as well as the boroughs of New York City. Find out more at www.NYShortSaleTeam.com
J. Philip Faranda is Westchester & the Hudson Valleys’s Premier Short Sale REALTOR. He has listed and sold successful short sales in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Dutchess, and Orange County, as well as the boroughs of New York City. Find out more at www.NYShortSaleTeam.com
May, 2009 will be the first month in recent memory that we did not close on a short sale. Three regular sales closed (interestingly, all were in Putnam County), but no workouts were among them. Is this a good sign for the economy? Unfortunately, it is an anomaly. One short sale I referred to a colleague in New York City will go under contract this week; 4 short sale listings went on the market in the month of May; and two short sale listings have received strong offers.
The skip of a month is a random event in the cycle. June will have at least one short sale closing, and many more are on the horizon. I have short sale listings in Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess, Queens and Suffolk as of this writing, and a prospective new associate may import 3 more. We are nowhere near being out of the woods.
J. Philip Faranda is Westchester & the Hudson Valleys’s Premier Short Sale REALTOR. He has listed and sold successful short sales in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Dutchess, and Orange County, as well as the boroughs of New York City. Find out more at www.NYShortSaleTeam.com
The government has moved to increase the incentive for lenders to allow short sales on their defaulted loans. I welcome this, although there is nothing specified as to how they’ll hold banks accountable for streamlining the process, which is rife with red tape, bureaucracy and long waits. If they truly want to make short sales happen more frequently to help more distressed homeowners out, they would mandate a maximum of 6 weeks for a short sale approval.
J. Philip Faranda is Westchester & the Hudson Valleys’s Premier Short Sale REALTOR. He has listed and sold successful short sales in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Dutchess, and Orange County, as well as the boroughs of New York City. Find out more at www.NYShortSaleTeam.com
128 days ago, I sat at a dining room table in Putnam Valley, New York, just north of the Westchester County border with a young couple who were listed 4 times previously with 3 different brokerages in unsuccessful attempts to sell their home. Along the way, they got behind on their payments due to loss of income and had all but lost hope that they could avoid a foreclosure.
One of my agents, Tom Ricapito, had found these nice people quite by accident, and told them to talk to me before giving up. This was the first time they had ever heard of a short sale. I told them I had closed dozens, and they listed with my company with Tom as their agent. He later told me that our meeting gave them new hope. It is funny how these people found us quite by random chance, and not through our regular marketing. When you specialize in New York short sales, they sometimes find you.
J. Philip Faranda is Westchester & the Hudson Valleys’s Premier Short Sale REALTOR. He has listed and sold successful short sales in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Dutchess, and Orange County, as well as the boroughs of New York City. Find out more at www.NYShortSaleTeam.com
I have blogged previously that lizards who are smart enough to move survive and those that sit still are quickly eaten by any colonies. Both sitting still and moving are survival mechanisms, but depending on the circumstances one can kill you and the other can save your life. In a New York short sale, curling up in a ball might work fine for an armadillo to survive, but it doesn’t help a homeowner avoid a foreclosure. I have often stated that proactive sellers, who help themselves, have far better results. It’s just that simple.
Yesterday, I met with one of my agents and a client who had bought a home with her about 4 years ago. We have known for months that they were having difficulties, and for some reason they delayed meeting with us. In fairness, they were trying to refinance and then for a loan modification, but when that failed they went to an outfit that promised to solve all their problems for a fee. The money for the fee disappeared, but their problems did not.
J. Philip Faranda is Westchester & the Hudson Valleys’s Premier Short Sale REALTOR. He has listed and sold successful short sales in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Dutchess, and Orange County, as well as the boroughs of New York City. Find out more at www.NYShortSaleTeam.com
Short sales have been quite common in the boroughs, such as Queens and the Bronx. They have now arrived in Manhattan. Until the financial crisis, Manhattan’s real estate market was actually extremely hot. The cooling down, however, has put New York City into the same economic malaise that the rest of the country is enduring. With that malaise has come the same combination of negative equity and distressed sale scenarios I have been dealing with in Westchester, Rockland, the Hudson Valley and Queens since 2006-7. People lose all or a portion of their income, they need to sell their condo, and they are confronted with the reality that the apartment they paid $900,000 for in 2008 is now worth $700,000.
That is not good when you owe $750,000.
Manhattan is not similar to any other real estate market in the USA. The big companies, such as the Corcoran Group and Prudential Elliman, have nothing about short sales in their marketing or web pages as of this writing. The agents who are doing big business are unfamiliar with negotiating short sales. Westchester was caught in the same pickle 2 years ago, and the growing pains for the agents were not good.
Finding a buyer is one thing; negotating a short sale is a completely different animal. You not only have to deal with the loss mitigation department at the lender, you have to orchestrate the whole process with the seller, the buyer’s agent, the buyer, and the buyer’s attorney, all of whom are in unfamiliar territory.
Right now my solution is to refer Manhattan short sales to the best brokers in my network and pair them with the best negotiators at my disposal to assist in the short sale process. I have referred a listing just this past week. In that condo’s category, there were 33 active listings that were unsold, and only 2 under contract. That tells me one thing- more short sales are coming to Manhattan.
J. Philip Faranda is Westchester & the Hudson Valleys’s Premier Short Sale REALTOR. He has listed and sold successful short sales in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Dutchess, and Orange County, as well as the boroughs of New York City. Find out more at www.NYShortSaleTeam.com
Naturally, brokers and agents are relieved because it ensures that the considerable time and effort that goes into selling a short sale property will not end with their compensation being raided by the lender in what has always amounted to 11th-hour extortion. In a market like mine in Westchester County, where the typical transaction is 45-60 days, the time to sell a short sale is easily triple that time in some cases. Sometimes the bank has accepted short sales with the caveat that the brokers get paid less, often with the rationale that something is better than nothing.
This decision is made by an out of state negotiator whose obtuse agenda is to minimnize the loss to the lender, but the consequences are far more damaging than a little pinch, because many brokers and agents are now refusing to show short sales to their buyers. While it may not amount to a blatant boycott, the agents will discourage their buyers with a variety of reasons, such as the long wait, the uncertain nature of the time invested, and the condition of the house. The real reason, however, is that they want to get paid. In this economic climate, that rationale is understandable.
I don’t agree with it, but it is understandable.
The ecology of the agent’s unwillingness to sell short sales is disastrous. Fewer showings mean fewer sales, and that hurts not only the sellers in the short term, it hurts everyone.
More unsold short sales mean the market will take longer to adjust.
Toxic assets remain on the books longer. Non-performing loans do no one any good.
Tax bills are not paid, hurting municipalities.
Buyers may be discouraged from buying what may be the perfect home for them.
Brokers who take longer to sell a buyer the right home may eventually lose that buyer to another broker, a for sale by owner, or inertia.
People who might otherwise benefot from selling their home in a short sale face foreclosure.
More foreclosures are the last thing this economy needs.
While Fannie Mae does not hold all loans, it holds enough to influence other entities. My local market of Westchester County has lots of Fannie Mae borrowers who are in negative equity. If brokers have confidence that they will get paid in full for selling a short sale, it will expedite the wringing out of bad loans, helping sellers and lenders alike, and speed an economic recovery.
J. Philip Faranda is Westchester & the Hudson Valleys’s Premier Short Sale REALTOR. He has listed and sold successful short sales in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Dutchess, and Orange County, as well as the boroughs of New York City. Find out more at www.NYShortSaleTeam.com
This short sale closed at the end of this past year. The clients were divorced, and the home they had built while married was incomplete and upside down. The house was listed this past summer.
Divorce cases are in and of themselves difficult. I have to give both clients credit in their dealings with me- they kept it to the transaction. It still was more difficult than with a happily married client, and there were the dicey moments one might expect, but in context we did well in spite of the circumstances.
There were numerous offers on the property, but getting consensus on which one to submit to the lender complicated matters. No offer separated from the pack- price was an issue with one (rather crucial in a short sale), another was an acquaintance of the husband, which the ex wife was reticent to accept, and we were unsure of how to go forward for a time.
Not long after, what appeared to be a tie-breaking offer came in. Price, terms and details did give it a distinct advantage, that is, until the incomplete state of the home came into play. Without a final certificate of occupancy, they reduced the offer by $20,000. A decision had to be made, and with time running short the acquaintances were chosen.
It took another 90 days to get approved. Unfortunately, the buyers then asked for an extension! Given the rigid guideline of the approval we could only grant one brief extension. When another was requested, we had to deny it. We began to get concerned that the buyers might no longer qualify, but the file was cleared to close the day after their extension was denied. They might have been jockeying for a better loan; it might have been a stroke of luck. Because the closing was scheduled in haste for a morning I was already booked, I was unable to be present for the closing.
I later found out that the buyer voiced a complaint about me at the closing. I have never dealt with this person (just his agent), nor was I the source of any of the difficulty on our side. The combination of a short sale and divorce would make any transaction difficult, and perhaps the buyer transferred his frustration to me. I have no way of knowing. I do know that the seller’s attorney advised him that he was mistaken and that I was a good guy. You know you are living right when an attorney sticks out their neck for you and you don’t get a bill!
J. Philip Faranda is Westchester & the Hudson Valleys’s Premier Short Sale REALTOR. Find out more at www.NYShortSaleTeam.com
Unless otherwise indicated, all data in this post is from the Westchester-Putnam Multiple Listing Service.
There are 3,454 single family homes actively for sale in Westchester County. Of those, 148 are disclosing either a short sale or foreclosure proceeding in process. This is about 4.3% of the available single family home inventory.
The actual number is probably far higher than that. That is because on many homes the listing agent has not disclosed, either knowingly or unknowingly, that the house is upside down or delinquent. Also, there are hundreds of overpriced listings which would be short sales if the price were lowered to market value. In other words, there are lots of $450,000 homes listed for $550,000 because the mortgage balance is $500,000. Continue reading here
J. Philip Faranda is Westchester’s Premier Short Sale REALTOR. Find out more at www.NYShortSaleTeam.com
A recent posting from an Ohio broker highlights how real estate differs from place to place. In it, she says that she advises her clients to not sign a contract with a buyer if the house is a short sale prior to getting the bank’s approval. While I won’t quarrel with what works for someone else in another market, I disagree.
That may work in Ohio, but it is ill-advised in New York. I do most of my short sales in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Dutchess, Nassau, Suffolk, Queens, Orange and Fairfield (CT) Counties. It is the same in each place- when the buyer makes an offer, it is submitted to the lender with the seller’s hardship package and a contract that is conditioned on the approval of the short sale. The contract is prepared by the seller’s attorney. If the short sale is approved, we have a deal. If it is not approved, my seller is not obligated to sell and incurs no financial obligation to the buyer. Most of the time we continue to negotiate with the lender anyway, but the contract protects both parties.
For the buyer, the contract ensures that they will not lose the house to another buyer after enduring the long process of short sale approval.
For the seller, whom I represent far more often, the contract ensures that the buyer will not simply walk away without penalty or recourse after that same lengthy process. If I list a short sale, my job is to protect my seller. Handshake deals do not protect the seller, only contracts and deposits protect them. This does not “imprison” the buyer. It is virtually the same sort of contingency as their own financing, which is in almost every real estate contract, and no seller objects to such contingencies.
Moreover, the lenders require a valid contract of sale before they approve a short sale. With no contract, the offer is hypothetical. Hypotheticals don’t help my clients whose goal is to avoid foreclosure.
J. Philip Faranda is Westchester’s Premier Short Sale REALTOR. Find out more at www.NYShortSaleTeam.com
Zillow has published a graph on how many homeowners have “negative equity,” or owe more than their home’s value. Not all these home owners are in touble; but the numbers are instructive.
Zillow Negative Equity Graph
As you can see, the downpayment rquirements after 2007 became far more stringent, no doubt due to the sub prime crisis. Negative equity started to rise in 2004 before the market peaked; that really tells us how much the bubble was inflated by bad loans.
Many of these people, should they need to sell, will either have to come up with money to close or face a short sale. This chart is for the New York metro area. If you’d like to see your marketplace, click here.
J. Philip Faranda is Westchester’s Premier Short Sale REALTOR. Find out more at www.NYShortSaleTeam.com
BPO stands for “broker price opinion.” It is a part of the short sale process that the lender uses to evaluate the merit of a short sale application. Simply put, the lender uses a BPO to ensure that the proposed sales price is aligned with market conditions. Some Westchester County Short sales, for example, are 20% less than the house’s value from 3 or 4 years ago. A home that was purchased in 2005 for $500,000 may only be worth $400,000 currently. Just to be certain, the lender sends out a 3rd party to verify this.
The BPO report looks very similar to an appraisal. There is a description of the subject property, and usually at least 4 recent comparable sales. If the offer on your home is $380,000 and the comparable sales are $410,000, $395,000, 375,000 and $355,000, then the lender will know that the value is legitimate. If all the comparable sales are over $425,000 and there is no compensating factor, such as deferred maintenance or needed repairs, the bank may deny the application. As much as the BPO report resembles an appraisal, it is not an appraisal, which is more expensive and produced by a licensed appraiser.
Often the lender will forego a BPO and do a full-blown appraisal. The theory here is that the appraiser will be more accurate. This is a sound theory, but one pitfall I have personally experienced is that lenders have a bizarre habit of contracting appraisers from a different marketplace who turn in robotic, formulaic reports based solely on price per square foot and not local market conditions. We have had short sales denied because the home has over appraised, causing more work and, in one case, a foreclosure. After it was repossessed, the home ended up selling for $100,000 less than what the lender claimed to be market value. That lender is no longer in business.
As prices continue to shrink, overpriced BPOs and appraisals are becoming less common. The BPO usually comes after the rest of the process is complete, so in those cases a decision from the lender on the short sale ought not be far off. Some lenders do them earlier, but as the marker changes I see that less and less.
J. Philip Faranda is Westchester’s Premier Short Sale REALTOR. Find out more at www.NYShortSaleTeam.com
This transaction came several years ago, before the market decline was fully accepted by home sellers. The client was a single mother who, because of a heart condition, missed a great deal of work and fell behind on her home loan. By the time I had met her, she was finished with another agent who failed to sell her home. She was skeptical of agents because of this, and felt that it was not her home’s price that was an issue, but how it was marketed. However, by the time we competed the CMA, she was clear that she owed more than the house would bring from the market.
Being the mother of two teenagers, my client was both scared and proactive. She was under terrible stress, which isn’t good for someone with a heart condition, but she was a fighter. She engaged with the bank as few sellers I have seen before or since. She hung on their every word. Anything they requested was faxed and followed up upon. She kept me on my toes. The buyer actually found the house through her craigslist posting. It never fails to impress me how much better things turn out for my clients who help themselves.
It was a tough process, but the short sale was approved. My clients’s attorney, well, let’s just say I wish he had half the initiative of the lady he represented. He did a sloppy job, and as a result of title issues he failed to detect, I walked away from the closing with about 75% of my commission going to cure a defecit. Niether the buyer nor the seller attorney seemed to feel at all badly about this draconian loss I had to eat. I never recommended the scoundrel again.
Regardless, my seller got out from under the house she could no longer afford, and she got her fresh start. Her attorney promised to refer me a client in exchange for my severe loss, but he never kept his promise. Just as well; I don’t want to hear from him. My client calls me from time to time, and she is rapidly approaching the point where she can buy again if she chooses. All in all, a tougher deal on me than my seller. That’s baseball.
J. Philip Faranda is Westchester’s Premier Short Sale REALTOR. Find out more at www.NYShortSaleTeam.com
J. Philip Faranda
