Short Sale Processing fees… Illegal or not illegal?

        There is a tremendous amount of buzz around whether it’s legal or not to charge an upfront processing fee to do someone’s short sale for them. My understanding is that the only people that are allowed to charge upfront fees to do a short sale or a loan modification are attorneys. That’s why I’ve developed a great relationship with my real estate attorney. As a matter of fact I made him a partner on everything that I do with him. Although I personally don’t charge an upfront fee to my clients for my services, I make sure to charge the short sale lender a significant processing fee payable to my attorney on the HUD [everytime]. I found out that once the bank sees the words “law firm” attached to that fee, they never argue. If you can’t beat them then why not find a way to join them. Unfortunately, because of all the bad press that’s been going around about real estate investors, agents, etc. in the past couple of years… when it comes to short sales, more and more people are turning to attorneys to get the job done. If you’re wondering why sellers aren’t responding to your marketing pieces like they used to…now you know. 

        Let’s face it, those of us that do short sales for a living are facing more challenges than ever before. Especially with all these Bankruptcy attorneys and their “free consultations”. Once people step into that big fancy office… it’s over! They start talking to sellers about deficiency judgments, tax repercussions, promissory notes, etc.

BK attorneys won’t mention the fact that all those things can be eliminated through negotiating with the lender.  Also, I’m sure that they leave out the bad stuff about doing a BK like your credit being toast for 7 to 10 years. Oh, and what about how you can do a bankruptcy on the day before the sale after you’ve exhausted all other options?! Nope, they don’t tell them that either.

        So I’ll say it again, if you can’t beat them then find a way to join them. If you’re a real estate professional, you probably know several real estate attorneys that may or may not be happy with their short sale processing company. Ask… you never know until you ask the question. That’s what I did and once I proved to them that I can deliver on my promises, they started sending me files.

        By the way, If you happen to be a real estate attorney in Central Florida with more short sales than you know what to do with or if you’re not happy with your current processors…contact me so we can talk. I have a full service staff of expert negotiators who know the short sale business inside and out. Just turn the file over to us and we’ll take it from there. Starting with putting together the package complete with listing agreement, submitting it to the bank, negotiating and following up with the bank, meeting the BPO agent, getting the approval letter and then finding the end buyer and delivering to you the complete package so you can close it. We do it all and we do it well.

407-855-4940