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

Big Banks… Shady Tactics

      I have client that I’ve been working on his loan modification for 2 years. Today we stopped the auction for the fourth time!  I truly believe that they don’t want to approve this modification even though he clearly qualifies for it according to Fannie Mae guidelines. They’ve done nothing but ask for updated bank statements, pay stubs, etc… you know the drill. Then they tell you they need something else or that they didn’t receive something and after that they’ll tell you that It’s now with a different negotiator and that you have to send everything in again! In the mean time the sale date approaches,  they tell you that they will reschedule the sale and never do. This left me with no choice but to use certain “Ninja Techniques”  just to stop the sale from going through just hours before the sale. I’ve done that four times for him already. The problem with that is… sure it forces the bank to vacate the foreclosure sale and delay the sale another six months… but it will also make you start over again from the beginning.

      I feel extremely bad for people who don’t know about these techniques to stop the sale and try and go about doing a loan mod on their own. Imagine how many people have lost there homes because of these down right “Shady Tactics” [that’s right I said it] that are being used by these big lenders. The truth is that the big banks have routinely committed fraud in their foreclosure filings and their records of how much people owe are too often wrong. And the mortgage modification process, which was meant to help homeowners, has been exposed as an abject failure.

     Salvageable mortgages are being foreclosed because the banks, wearing their “mortgage servicer” hats, find it more profitable to foreclose than modify loans. And even when the banks sincerely try to modify loans, they often seem incompetent. If the banks won’t deal, throw the book at them. Just like it’s been thrown at baseball great Barry Bonds for his comparatively trivial alleged perjury. If we can prosecute Bonds but not the banks, what kind of country are we?

     If you or someone you know is getting bullied by the bank please contact us for a free consultation, we can help. 407-902-7749