• Are you upside down on your mortgage?
  
  
• Is your home worth less than you still owe on your home loan?
  
  
• Is it impossible to sell your home without bringing money to closing...basically paying a buyer to buy your house from you?

There has been a huge rise of unfortunate circumstances in Dunedin, Clearwater and Palm Harbor real estate that are forcing homeowners to stay in their homes and not be able to sell over the past few years. A home owner's change in income, marital status, job change and unforeseen mortgage, taxes and insurance payments have put them in a very difficult situation. Foreclosure could be one of the very worst legal processes a homeowner could ever experience. Real Estate investors who own multiple properties are experiencing the same experience in today's real estate market, but in multiples. In this current market Realtors have helped thousands of homeowners and real estate investors be able to walk away from their properties without foreclosure and move on with their lives. By working with lenders, your Realtor can find a buyer and coordinate a short sale.

A short sale can happen if the mortgage company agrees to accept less than what is owed on the home loan. The homeowner would have to be experiencing a financial hardship and/or is upside down due to decreasing home values. However, just because a homeowner is going through financial troubles or behind on their house mortgage payments, does not assume the lender will approve a short sale. This is when an experienced Realtor and mitigator are very valuable in the short sale situation. The right Realtor and short sale mitigator can successfully present facts and negotiate with the lender to sway them into accepting less than they are owed. Since the house is an investment to the lender, they will mitigate their losses and sometimes this can be a long process.

A short sale process in the wrong hands will be full of problems, delay and most likely will result in foreclosure. With most of our Real Estate sales being short sales and foreclosures, we are very experienced in how to do things correctly and reducing the time it takes to do a short sale. Not wasting any amount of time is extremely importantbecause you are working against time and foreclosure. If you are worried about your ability to buy and own another home in the future, then a short sale is the way to go. Mortgage experts say that a foreclosure can reduce the home owner's credit score by over 250 points and it would take over 5 years to qualify for a conventional mortgage at a reasonable rate. Short sales appear on your credit report as a pre-foreclosure in redemption status and would qualify you for a new mortgage in approximately 18 months.

Seller beware of foreclosure and short sale rescue schemes. Over the past few years, many homeowners have been desperate and reached out to con artists who advertise themselves as foreclosure specialists. These companies promise to save the homeowner from foreclosure. The con artists ends up stealing the home and any equity left. These people are finding several loop holes in the process and are doing anything that they can do to make a profit without having any concern for what happens to the homeowner and the home. As time goes on, these people have become harder to detect. Sometimes they charge the homeowner an upfront fee and this is a good sign that you need to walk away from that deal. Another big scheme is when they offer to pay the past due mortgage amount to bring the loan current and then they will ask you to sign the deed over to them. They will also tell the homeowner that they can rent until they can repurchase but the rent payments are usually higher than the mortgage payments and a whole spiral of mess evolves. The best advice that I could give, would be to avoid these companies at all costs and trust in an experienced Realtor to manage the sale directly with the title company and mortgage lender.


Contact us anytime to discuss the short sale process and see if you would qualify with your lender. We currently manage listing short sales for sellers and working with buyers looking for short sale property in all of Pinellas County. We give you all the knowledge you need to decide if a short sale is the best option for you and give you all the right advice to process a successful short sale.


Currently, there are approximately 50 active short sale listings on the MLS in Dunedin. There are approximately 160 short sale listings in the city of Palm Harbor and over 365 in Clearwater! Tarpon Springs has 108 short sale homes listed on the MLS. The city of Oldsmar has over 40 short sales listed and Safety Harbor has 26 short sale homes. Of course the bigger the city, the more short sales. For example, St Petersburg has over 665 short sale listings! The beach cities have a very small amount of
short sale real estate. If you would like a list of these properties, feel free to email a request for short sale listings in the area you are interested in and in the price range you would like to see.