All Forum Posts by: Hazel L

Tim, maybe your story should be labeled "How to Lose Credibility & Alienate Investors" :mrgreen:

It depends what you're looking for in a listing agent--highest sales rates (% closed) or the largest number of sales (volume). I take a more quantifiable approach when looking for listing agents, and have a realtor friend look up records for me on the MLS.

If you're looking for an agent with a high volume of sales, you can have a realtor friend look up a list of closed sales in the past 6 months or year in a certain neighborhood/city. You can copy paste the table into excel or access and sort by agent ID and see who has the most listings.

If you'd like to find agents with a high percentage of sold listings (this is going to be a little harder to do), you can sort the list by expired listings. Look up the agent history for the agent ID numbers that only had 0-1 expired listings. When viewing their sales history for the past 6 months to a year, divide expired listings by total listings to determine percentage of sold listings. Compare percentages among agents find out who has to highest percentage of sold listings, and thus the higher chance of getting your property sold.

Here's a link to an example of sorting with this method in my city for your reference:

http://www.irvinehousingblog.com/blog/comments/irvine-realtor-ratings-7-8-2007/

Hope that helps, best of luck to you with finding those agents!

I can't say how many times people have told me this once I tell them I work in real estate. I've done my research and I think I have a pretty good comeback especially when they throw articles from CNN like this at me:

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/real_estate/0704/gallery.stocks_v_realestate.moneymag/index.html

Just wanted to see if anyone had a good answer they wanted to share! :D

Paul, are you talking about properties that are not primary residences? The short sale negotiators I work with consistently get both deficiency waivers and tax waivers. As per the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007, homeowners are exempt from deficiency judgments on primary residence on a federal level. In my state, that exemption is excluded if the property has been refinanced or has a HELOC.

Mike--I totally agree with you. Most banks do not pursue them. If you are in a deficiency state with a bank that tends to pursue judgments, preventing a deficiency judgment is entirely dependent on your lender negotiator. Short sale specialists in deficiency states on this site get waivers all the time, but alot of less savvy negotiators tend to treat them like UFO's--they've heard about them, but have never actually seen one themselves. They do exist! Ask around the site, I'm sure you'll be able to find some folks who can help you get that waiver in your state.

Welcome to the site! Hope it will prove to be as great a resource for you as it has been to me. Best of luck!

Hi Earl! Welcome to the site, I'm sure it will prove to be a great resource to you--especially with your move to Las Vegas. Best of luck!

Hmm...or maybe Josh just signed off after reading your post to make what Nick pointed out a little less obvious :wink:

Thanks for the suggestion, Demos-- didn't know BP had that feature.

Aaron--the complete law can be found at the following link:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/reforms-for-american-homeowners-and-consumers-president-obama-signs-the-helping-families-save-their-homes-act-and-the-fraud-enforcement-and-recovery-act/

I found an article by AP that summarizes it pretty well here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30891380/

Hope that helps!

This is a great discussion! Just wanted to add to Jon's point about the new law, tenants with a signed lease get to stay in the property until the lease is over and then an additional 90 days after that. Tenants without a signed lease only get 90 days; however, in my area I've heard lenders still serving notices in hopes of getting tenants to leave earlier (most tenants aren't aware of the new law).

I've come across this often debated question--if you're the tenant and you know your foreclosing homeowner isn't forwarding your payments to the lender, do you keep on paying? What are your obligations to pay after the house is sold at auction and you're sitll entitled to remain in the property?