Posts from — August 2009

Short Sale Condo For Sale in Ahwatukee

Today, after 2 months of back & forth phone calls with Fannie Mae, I finally have confirmation “direct from the horse’s mouth” about buying a property after a short sale.

24 months from the closing date of a short sale, assuming the buyer has kept current on all additional loans, credit cards, etc. and buyer meets all Fannie Mae underwriting criteria, Fannie Mae may purchase the loan from the lender.

Now, this isn’t something new and it was posted in Fannie Mae’s August 2008 guidelines HOWEVER there has been a lot of speculation about whether this is still current information (it is) as well as brings light to the fallacy of buying another property immediately.

Technically speaking, you can buy another home after a short sale whenever you’d like!  You can buy it a week later, a month later, an hour later, or even sign the closing docs for your short sale and then turn your chair around and sign buyer’s documents for another property!

You need to find a lender that will underwrite you first of all and this may be a difficult task.  But if you can find one then you can buy a property whenever they’ll fund you!  Be advised that Fannie Mae will not buy the loan from the lender/servicer however for 24 months so this will probably drastically affect your interest rate and/or terms.

If you have cash you can buy a property without worrying about lender stipulations however it will probably be of high interest to the lender that you just short sold a property with how in the heck you have all this cash to buy a new house when you just pleaded poverty to get them to approve your short sale.

I don’t want to get into mortgage fraud or perjury here and I don’t really know how the lender would find out that you just bought another property but this is a morality issue that I’m not going to even discuss.  Be careful what you do, cross all your T’s & dot your i’s and stay within the bounds of legality — that’s our advice!

For more information about the Arizona short sale process please visit us on the web at http://www.AzHomeHelp.com or call one of our consultants at (480) 241-4406.

Updated 2:55pm 8/25/09

Legislature has moved to “sine die”  the special session which, in English, means Governor Brewer has an additional 10 days to make a decision as to the bill.  Bill HB 2008 is part of these bills that she has 10 more days to act on and this  includes the repeal of SB 1271.

So we’ll wait it out another 10 days and see what happens.  Let’s all keep our fingers crossed that the right decision to repeal SB 1271 is made!!

If the repeal of SB 1271 is important to you then I highly encourage you to send a quick note to Governor Brewer emphasizing your support for her signature on HB 2008 which will repeal the bill.  Here is the link:

http://azgovernor.gov/Contact.asp

Also, please send us a note as well if you’d like up-to-the-minute information regarding this bill:  Repeal SB 1271

Every day I field phone calls from sellers asking questions about doing a short sale on their property.  A large percentage of these sellers complete our sellers short sale package within the next day or two and we have the property up and running within 72 hours and some have sold as quickly as one day.  In the last 3 weeks alone we’ve received contracts on properties we have up for short sale in 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, and 11 days.  There ARE buyers out there and they are buying!

Another portion of these sellers I don’t hear from again for weeks or sometimes a month or two but then after they’ve explored all their options and decided that a short sale is best for them we are then listing their property and working diligently to get it sold as soon as possible.

The last percentage of calls, albeit a small percentage but a percent nonetheless, end up procrastinating so long that eventually I get that last minute desperation call:

“I couldn’t decide what to do!” or “I’ve just been so busy”, or “It just wasn’t a priority and I didn’t think they would actually try to foreclose on me!” are what I hear.

Not that I mind, it’s just that we have to really scramble to get all the paperwork completed, property listed, and foreclosure date postponed all in a record amount of time.  It can be done (and yes, we have done it!) it’s just that the 3-4  months of time that has passed from our initial contact with them until now is 3-4 months that we potentially could have listed, sold, & closed the property  already!

My point is that the biggest step you can take is to move forward.  It doesn’t matter if you decide to do a loan modification, do a short sale, file bankruptcy, etc.  Make sure to take the time to inform yourself of all  your options then do what you feel is best for you and your situation.  It doesn’t help to spend all the time learning and then not taking anymore steps forwards.  Analysis paralysis can be a killer here, especially in the local short sale market.

I know it can be difficult to make these kinds of decisions and it’s probably not something you ever thought you would be doing but you are not alone.  There are hundreds of thousands of people nationwide who are in the exact same upside down situation and those that take action now are on their way to recovery much sooner than those that procrastinate.

We have tried to provide as much information as possible regarding options to avoid foreclosure, Az short sales, and loan modifications on our Arizona Short Sale site so please take advantage of this free resource.  There are no ebooks to buy, no courses to order, and there are no free gifts for ordering today!!  We want to educate both the Arizona homeowner as well as the Arizona professional real estate community including CPA’s, attorneys, and other Arizona short sale Realtors.

We encourage you to learn all you can about your options and use our website as a free source.  Our Arizona Short Sale blog is a wonderful resource as well (and if you’re reading this then you’ve already found it!)  When you’d like to take the next step and get started please give us a call 7 days a week from 8am – 8pm at (480) 241-4406 and we’ll be happy to help get you out from under your mortgage.  If you have any questions feel free to contact us at anytime.

We also have a full list of referrals such as legal counsel, tax attorneys, CPA’s, credit counselors, etc. and happily provide you with their contact information as well.

Thanks for staying in tune with the market and we look forward to working with you!