Chris Farkas Bellingham Blog: Short Sale Education

I've been working with foreclosure/short sale properties for 2-3 years now but I continue to go to educational opportunities that are available. I'm currently in a seminar to get updated information on the industry. Short sales are a changing landscape and it's important to keep current with the latest and greatest information.

The difficult part of working with short sales is convincing sellers who are struggling with making their payments, to talk to me as soon as possible, before they miss payments. A lot of time I'm able to get them out of their mortgage before they even miss a payment. They can get out of their home without damaging their credit at all.

Lenders sometimes give sellers inaccurate information, too. I've had sellers contact me who have intentionally missed their mortgage payment because their lender told them they wouldn't work with them unless they missed a payment. THIS IS NOT TRUE. I have completed short sales for sellers who never missed a payment but were originally told by their lender that they had to miss a payment before they would talk to them about a short sale.

If there's one thing I'd like sellers to do is...if they're struggling making their mortgage payments or know they're going to have trouble in the future...talk to your Realtor today about your options. If your Realtor isn't familiar with short sales have them call me. I'm happy to help them understand the options that sellers have so they can better help their clients. Giving sellers better tools to take control of their finances is what I love to do. And I love to help other agents in this process, too. It can be frustrating and confusing. Helping each other is a good thing!