Buying short sales can be an extremely profitable way to purchase a single property or spend money on multiple properties. A short sale is a real estate transaction in which the seller has stopped making payments on the mortgage and has little, or no equity left in the property. The bank trying desperately never to have to foreclose (costing them thousands in legal fee's and time) allows many times for the seller to market the property for less then your amount owed and forgive the difference.

In the bank's mind in any event they have a major problem if the borrower cannot make the payments: either they spend legal fees, time, and take the opportunity that the property will undoubtedly be in sub-par condition because of the fact that most times folks are foreclosed upon the homes are not properly maintained. Then quần short have to get the property back shape hire and pay an agent to sell the house for the most they are able to enter a REO situation. OR the lender can allow the current seller to sell for up to the market will allow and just pay all costs from the sale (that they would need to pay anyway) and get a check for what the home netted after the sale, a much faster and many times much more profitable situation for the lender and better situation for owner looking at the chance to be foreclosed upon.

To find short sales your very best bet is to hire the services of a real estate agent that specializes in them or at least has a very good grasp of how they work. An agent that is very experienced inside them is definitely the optimum resource to locate, negotiate, and help you in the purchase of the property. Banks by their nature have become difficult to deal with and take an extremely long time to make decisions in what price they will let their homes sell for. The loss mitigation department of the lender that is servicing the loan could be the department handling each of the banks deals with regards to short sales, and that department of the lender is in charge of getting the best terms for the bank and getting as much out of the assets they are in charge of. Many times losing mitigators can make bonuses for maximizing the total amount they get for the properties they are currently taking offers on. A sharp agent will be your very best asset in defending why, and what terms you as a buyer will accept from the lender handling the sale.

The short sale process is quite detailed and every bank does things differently so this should be looked at as a guide but for the most part this is the basic routine that occurs when investing in a short sale. First an offer is submitted to the seller (which is still in charge of the property) and they need to sign off on the offer first. As a buyer you will require a iron tight loan approval or often the bank will not even consider the offer for fear that you as a buyer aren't even qualified. Once you submit the offer, seller signs off on it your offer with loan approval will undoubtedly be submitted to the bank. It will require typically 3-6 weeks for the lender to react to the offer. What they do during that time is order an appraisal of the property to establish what the fair market value of the house is in it's present state, and marketplace. They then put your offer in line a loss mitigators desk these mitigators handle all of the offers and review them for the bank and because they handle sales for all on the country they are typically very supported and take a very long time to respond. After they do respond they will most likely counter the offer submitted since they want to get the customer to offer the most money for the lender as possible. Here's in which a experienced and competent real estate agent will help you to cope with the lender and negotiate terms on your side not the bank's.

When all the terms have been decided to and the offer now becomes a contract escrow timelines start. (escrow is opened at the time of the initial offer that is accepted by seller but hasn't yet been submitted to bank.) Most buyer's will request a house and termite inspection and they are conducted just as a regular deal is, the hang-up often is that any issues (and you will see issues) that are found with the home will never be able to be fixed in most circumstances since the seller has no money to do repairs. Buyer's who buy short sales should place offers low enough that when small issues are located during inspections they are OK with proceeding to close, if large major issues can be found in the home it really is most likely best to go back to the bank and ask for repairs or just cancel your contract and discover another property. After inspections are complete the short sale follows the same closing activities as a regular sale does.