REALTORS® for Century 21 M&M and Associates out of the Modesto, CA office are feeling upbeat about the Short Sale process for 2011. The general consensus is that Short Sale Transactions are getting easier.
Agents Ken Anderson and Dennis Lines are expecting somewhere in the neighborhood of one million homes being sold through the foreclosure process during 2011. And since foreclosures cost the mortgage holders approximately $50,000, it is possible that banks and investors are more open to the possibility of a closing a Short Sale transaction.
Another reason that Short Sales are getting easier is possibly due to the fact that the Treasury Department recently reviewed and eliminated some rules to make eligibility easier.
Here are some of the changes the Treasury Department implimented that are meant to streamline the process:
1. Servicers are no longer required to verify that the borrower’s debt-to-income ratio exceeds 31%.
2. Regarding the issue of second-lien investors, the new guidelines eliminate the 6% maximum pay-out rule, still keeping the $6,000 pay-out cap. Now, it is up to the servicers to determine the percentage of the unpaid principal balance to be paid to each holder.
3. All borrowers must now receive a short sale agreement within 30 days of the request.
All in all, Realtors are seeing the time required to complete a Short Sale transaction getting shorter. And, all of the agents agreed that although this type of transaction is still cumbersome, it is not going away anytime soon. Brenda Pintabona, Brenda Singleton and Stan Cunningham have all experienced the ‘easing up’ of short sales.
In fact, most agents feel that the number of completed short sale transactions will increase during 2011. Sally Frampton, feels that there will be “more and more short sales during 2011, with more and more positive results”. That is Sally’s ‘hopeful’ real estate forecast for 2011.
Northern CA Real Estate 