Home buyers who find homes for sale in The Colony Texas that are priced well below market value may be looking at a Short Sale. Unfortunately the MLS prohibits Realtors from stating that a home for sale in The Colony TX  is a short sale so call me and I will find out for you.

Throughout this blog, when I say “lender” this means the current owner / sellers mortgage lender. 

A short sale has become a common situation in the Real Estate market. For buyers who have been hearing the term “short sale” and don’t quite understand what it means, a short sale is a legal lender approved solution designed to assist a home owner who is financially strapped to get out from under their mortgage debt.

A short sale is negotiated through the owners lender where by the lender agrees to take less than what home owner owes on the property.

A quick example of a short sale would be if a home owner owes $200,000 on their current mortgage and their home is only worth $180,000. The lender in this example would agree to take a short fall of $20,000 at closing.  However, many Realtors will list The Colony home for sale well below market value to attract buyers offers.   So in this example, the $180,000 home may be listed for sale at $160,000.   Now the lender is looking at taking a short fall of $40,000 if they agree to the contract.  Understand that the lender is not required to agree to the $160,000 list price.

Short sale contacts  take time.  You, the home buyer who chooses to put an offer in on a short sale needs to have patience and not have a quick time deadline on when you have to close.   If you have to buy a home in under 60 days, then I recommend avoiding short sale homes.   If you are easily frustrated, avoid short sales.

If you want to consider buying a short sale home, then we need to sit down and go over the Texas Short Sale Addendum to the contract so you understand exactly what may occur.  

How short sales are handled varies from lender to lender.  Some lenders will only look at one offer at a time.  Some lenders look at multiple buyers offers and pick one.  

 Short sales can go smoothly.  I recently helped buyers purchase a short sale home that closed in under 60 days.

Short sales can fall apart.  Last year I had a client under contract on a short sale and theirs was the best offer. Patiently waiting for the lender to respond.  45 days later we were informed that a “significantly higher offer” came in and the lender bumped us.  We started the home search process over and ended up buying a HUD foreclosure they liked even better.   

If you are looking at homes for sale in The Colony Texas and want to know which homes are short sales, foreclosures, bank owned properties and homes being sold by home owners; allow me to set up a custom search gateway for you in the MLS. 

Let me know how I can help you find the right place to call home.

Tags: Home, Home Buyers, Homes for Sale, Short Sale, The Colony Texas, the colony tx homes for sale

Posted on Thursday, July 29th, 2010 at 11:44 am and is filed under Buy a House, Real Estate, Short Sale. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.