Lockboxes on houses
Just a tip for those out there doing shortsales. The best thing that can ever happen to making a shortsale go through easilly is to influence the appraisal/BPO. This must be done in person obviously.
A realtor brought two deals to me, which I agreed to negotiate and ultimately purchase. The house has illegal bedrooms, faulty wiring etc, things that needed to be explained in person and was going to make an awesome shortsale.
Anyhow, I specifically told him to take the realtor lockboxes off, or replace them with combination boxes and don't put the combination in the listing.
Sure enough, both banks managed to get appraisals without my knowledge, and now we are facing the battle of the bank thinking its way too high of a value.
Anyway, figured I would share this, its one of the first things I tell everyone. Yet I see it happen all the time.