All Forum Posts by: Kathryn C.

It is good professional practice to always acknowledge offers received within 24 hours and at a minimum they should tell you if the offer was rejected however many times the agents are waiting on the sellers to respond and the sellers are waiting to see if they receive any other offers.  As far as I know all states require a written offer to be presented. We always send our offers with the first sentence stating "Please confirm receipt of our clients offer".. If they don't acknowledge it within 24 hours, the majority do, we send a follow up stating we sent it previously but never heard back.  If they don't respond to that we send it by fax to their office and call the broker, not the agent, and ask if the agent is out of town as we submitted an offer but cannot get a response.  Not the best way to build a relationship with the agent but will most certainly get you a response.

Our team closed several hundred short-sales last year and I can tell you there are numerous strategies for being successful at buying them. 

First you should realize the national average discount for a short-sale is 18%+/- of the appraised value.  This is not critical knowledge for getting your offer accepted, but it is critical for not wasting time on deals that are not worth pursing. 

As some have previously stated, getting your offer in first is critical. Many times we already have the property under contract before it ever even hits the local MLS system. Agents love to work with us because they know our buyers will preform when it gets approved whether it takes two months or a year. Agents HATE putting a property under contract just to have it fall out. It is a lot of paperwork for them and then the process starts all over with a new buyer. They are basically selling the same property multiple times but only getting paid once. Building a relationship with one or more of your top local short-sale agents should be a priority. One way to build a relationship is to offer to let the short-sale agent be your listing agent when it's time for you to sell your property.

Contingencies can help you in the beginning getting deals accepted, but they can also hurt you in the end.  The stronger your reputation the more contingencies you will be able to get away with in your contract. I can tell you I would never accept our contingencies from another buyer which include: 

- Due diligence starts at receipt of bank approval letter

- Earnest money due within 7-10 days of receipt of bank approval letter

- EM held by our attorney who also must close the transaction (difficult when another attorney is handling the short negotiations but there are ways to structure it where they still get paid and our attorney closes it)

- Property is vacant at least 24 hours prior to closing

These contingencies help protect our earnest money in the event values during the time it takes to get approval.  I'd be happy to give any suggestions to help but real estate is local and there may be rules or regulations that may make some of these suggestions unavailable in your area...

Whether or not you can find a flat fee listing service will depend on your local MLS and if there are any companies that offer those flat fee services. In smaller communities that haven't caught up with the times I could see some backlash from the local RE professionals for those that do offer this however I will say if you can find a GOOD agent they will usually pay for themselves and save you a ton of headaches in the process.