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Short Sale Information

Breaking News Update:

Many Short Sales have already waited 4 to 5 months for bank approval and have finally received bank approval at a fixed price. If you find a Short Sale that is already approved you can get a response within 1 week. These are great deals.

In February 2009, 49 Single Family Short Sales were listed. As of June 22, 2009 only 4 have sold, which is 8.16%.

Compare this to Foreclosures which had 21 new listings in February, and 11 of them have sold, which is 52.38%.

The above stats are a big reason why we prefer Foreclosures and conventional sales.

Keep in mind more of the Short Sales listed in February and more of the Foreclosures will sell eventually, but this highlights the time lag for closing on a Short Sale.

In 2008 we represented more Buyers of Single Family Homes than any other agent on Oahu, and we were #2 for Condos. I mention this so you understand we work with a lot of Buyers, and we make a lot of Short Sale offers so we have unfortunately experienced a lot of Short Sale disappointments along with our clients.

We have also found many times the bank will take 3 to 4 months and then counter with a higher price that makes the purchase not as attractive.

If you do decide to make an offer on a Short Sale, we would be happy to help you. We have several strategies we use to increase your chances of closing on the property. I am not mentioning what we do here because I don't want our competitors to know our strategy.

We hope in the future banks will get their act together and start approving Short Sales faster. This would be a huge benefit for both Buyers and Sellers of Short Sales.

Definitions

Short Sale - The owner of the home is selling but they won't have enough money to pay off their mortgage at closing. Because of this the bank has to approve the sale.

Foreclosure - The lender already owns the home.

More details on a Foreclosure

The buying process for a Foreclosure is similar to a conventional sale although it might take a few extra days to get the response from the bank. The escrow period is the normal 45 days. Many Foreclosures have multiple offers so you need to make your offer as competitive as possible. You will not get a disclosure statement as the bank does not know anything about the property.