Short Sale offers, how much should I list my house for?
August 22, 2008 · Print This Article
baley2001 asked:
My house has been for sale for a year now and I can no longer afford to make payments. I want to try to do a short sale before I consider foreclosure, but the bank will give me no suggstions as to how much an acceptable lowball offer would be. I owe 165,000 on the house and want to get out of there asap!!! I was thinking 139,999, what do you think would be the lowest the bank would take?
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My house has been for sale for a year now and I can no longer afford to make payments. I want to try to do a short sale before I consider foreclosure, but the bank will give me no suggstions as to how much an acceptable lowball offer would be. I owe 165,000 on the house and want to get out of there asap!!! I was thinking 139,999, what do you think would be the lowest the bank would take?
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Josh Dunaway has been a certfied Realtor in the suburban Chicagoland area for over 20 years. Aside from starting his own real estate company, he also owns a mortgage company as well.
It’s really hard to say what the bank will take because all banks are different in their thinking - some would rather foreclose than short sell, and it doesn’t matter what kind of offers you get, they won’t agree to it. On the other hand, some banks are very realistic about the market and have very aggressive asset managers who will accept almost any offer that comes in. You need to find yourself a good Realtor who will take on the HUGE responsibility of communicating constantly with the bank so that you can make a short sale work. They are very hard, but they can be done. As far as what to list your house at, you shouldn’t base it on what you owe, you should base it on what comparables are selling for - your Realtor can help you with that or you can hire an appraiser. What you owe has nothing to do with how much your house is worth. Good luck!
You would think the bank would want to give you some guidance. But they are not really in a position to know the value of your property.
What I have seen is that the bank requires that a professional, licensed real estate agent list the property for sale. The agent will have to do a Comparable Market Analysis (CMA) showing what comparable properties have sold for recently. As you can imagine, in some cases there haven’t been any sales - but a good agent should be able to work around this.
Anyway, in TX, I have seen some “Short Sale” real estate agents put low asking prices on the properties. They need to get offers in to present to the bank for an approval of an acceptable sales price.
Get a real estate agent experienced in Short Sales…there are more and more of us now. Get your house listed for sale. An experienced SS agent will probably tell you to write a letter to your lender outlining why you need a short sale - loss of job, illness, etc.
Another thing your agent will probably tell you is that so far lenders have been notoriously slow, so figure this could take 3 months or so.
Good luck.