It is easier for home sellers to find unlimited agents willing to list their homes than finding agents for short sale listings. This is because the latter does more than make a listing in MLS. Short sale agents bargain with banks. Hence, in addition to short sale negotiations, they must be experienced in mitigating losses in order to benefit sellers. Luckily, I am confident about closing short real estate sales since they comprise more than half of my closings in Sacramento since 2006.
Sealing a short sale successfully equates to selling five regular homes. Additionally, there are certain circumstances when we resell the same home repeatedly because of buyers flaking constantly.
It is vital for an agent to handle her negotiations independently. You should flee from agents who either contract the negotiation or make you to pay for the same. Some agents even hire less experienced third parties to step in the negotiations, which is unprofessional.
Searching For Short Sale Listing Agents
Many realtors advertise themselves as experts in short sale owing to the increase in short sales and foreclosures since 2006 in several regions of the country. Unfortunately, most of them feature little if any experience in this field. For instance, I spoke to an agent masquerading as a short sale guru with more than 50 successful short sales. However, upon searching his details via MLS, I discovered that since his licensing 3 years earlier, he had closed less than 25 sales.
Five Ways of Finding Short Sale Listing Agent
- Recommendations from family or associates- Foreclosures are in high demand in certain areas compared to regular sales. Hence, sellers could know trustworthy agents for short sales and they would certainly offer the best referral.
- Asking for a referral from another agent- an agent who does not deal with short sales often knows their colleagues who specialize in short sales. Owing to their expertise, agents use harsher scales for weighing their counterparts. Additionally, they receive referral fees from successful transactions. As a result, they will recommend the best agents. However, some short sale agents fail to pay this fee because of the complexity of the transaction.
- Attending Short Sale Open Houses, this is a sure way of determining whether the agent presenting the open house also does listings. An agent can allow his associate to host open listings. Luckily, if you can ask them about the short sales alongside a record of their dealings, you can rate their level of expertise.
- Using the Internet-, most short sale agents display their experiences in blogs partly as a relief from the exhaustion of handling negotiators. You will get a picture of their real experiences since their blogs portray the image of a workers’ diary. Thus, you should visit several websites and examine their agents’ listings to determine the actual short sales agents.
- Conduct short sale MLS searches- liaise with a friend in real estate trade who can access MLS who will help you to search for short sales agents. These agents serve wide geographical spaces implying that you should not limit your search to a given region. Consider the dealings of several agents over a couple of recent years while giving special attention to their DOM. Purpose to visit websites for agents with a lower DOM.
