Buying a short sale can be a great investment, however, everything depends on the bank’s response to your offer and any other offers. One of the trends I am seeing is listing agents listing a home at a price that is so much lower than everything else on the market it can not help but bring in offers. The object is to get the offer, then get the bank to at least look at it. What has happened twice in the last week to a couple of my buyers is very frustrating. The listing agent had dropped the price to a point that the bank would not even consider a full price offer.
When the buyer wrote the offer we knew what was owed, we knew where we stood that this was a short sale, and we knew that there were multiple offers. The bank’s response was that they would not take any of them, and instructed the listing agent to raise the price by $20,000 to $30,000. The buyers…. they found other homes listed at the same amount that are already bank owned – so the answer comes quicker and the home is theirs sooner.
Be careful when looking to purchase a short sale…. make sure the listing agent is not doing the too good to be true pricing…. because if it is too good to be true – it most likely is.