Paradise Real Estate

Short Sale Homes in South Lake Tahoe: an explanation

A short sale is not a pleasant experience for anyone, the seller, lender or buyer, but it can have positive outcomes for those that survive it all. Years ago a short sale or a foreclosure weren’t nearly as common as they are today. They meant failure, embarrassment, bad credit and more. Today, it seems like they are words that everyone knows, words that are demonstrative of the financial crisis of today and aren’t as uncommon as they once were. The stigma of having to give your home back to the back or sell it in a short sale isn’t the same.

When a lender agrees to do a short sale in real estate it means the lender is accepting less that the total amount due on a home loan. They are a solution when one can no longer make their mortgage payment and they don’t want to face foreclosure or bankruptcy. But, not all lenders will accept short sales or discounted payoffs, especially if it would make more financial sense to foreclose, but, and this is a big but, not all sellers nor all properties qualify for short sales.
Here are four questions you need to answer with a “yes” before you can qualify for a short sale. 1) Has your home’s value dropped to an amount less than what you owe? 2) Is your mortgage at or near default? 3) Has the seller fallen on hard times? A letter of hardship must be submitted, explaining why the homeowner has or will stop making the payments. 4) Does the seller have no assets?

What can a buyer expect in a short sale? You should have a reliable agent experienced in short sales and check the public records to see if a foreclosure has been initiated and see how many loans are against the property. If you do your homework you will be able to give the lender a reasonable offer than may not be rejected (since they don’t have to accept your offer). Give the lender a time frame in which to respond. You hear of banks dragging the process along so far that the property ends up in foreclosure instead of a short sale offer being accepted. You can expect the lender to take 2 to 3 months to respond. Put a time limit on your offer so you can be free to cancel should they not reply in the time period stated. It Is very important to get a home inspection on the property before buying. The lenders aren’t in the same obligations through a short sale transaction as they are through a traditional sale.

In South Lake Tahoe today there are currently 43 short sales on the California side and 11 of the Nevada side. They range in prices from a low of $138.000 and a high of $999.950. There are a lot of great opportunities to buy your Lake Tahoe home through a short sale and we’re here to help. Please sign up for my free, up to the minute list for South Lake Tahoe  California or Nevada short sales, or give me a call or email.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 21st, 2011 at 6:50 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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