Elizabeth Weintraub • Sacramento Short Sale Agent • Land Park

Some short sales will forever stick with this Sacramento short sale agent because the sellers are such delightful people. In the end, it's all about helping the seller. And sometimes I work with sellers whom I suspect would be raked over the coals if their situation fell into less than honorable hands. There are some people who make me want to take extra special care of them; I feel protective. Like my recent HAFA short sale closing for this elderly couple in their 80s. They reminded me of my grandparents, long gone.

The first buyers who committed to buy this short sale were not very nice people. They agreed to put down 25% and get a conventional loan. But after we received short sale approval, these buyers changed their minds. However, not before they made the sellers move out, 5 days prior to closing. Then, after promising to close escrow, they canceled the transaction and left the sellers out on the street.

They canceled because they had somehow decided to change their financing status midstream without authorization and put down 20%. But their lender would not approve such a down payment because the property had a non-conforming structure in the back yard. A seller can't sue such creatures when they don't have any money.

Enter buyer #2. She agreed to put down 25%. We were clear with the buyer's agent and his mortgage broker that the down payment had to be 25% to get a loan on this property. Oh, but this that and the other thing, the mortgage broker did a dance. No, we insisted, the down payment had to be 25% to get a loan. Read my lips. Buyer went back and forth as we negotiated with the bank. The second loan meanwhile went to charge-off. The buyer's agent and mortgage broker were stunned to learn that she really did need to put down 25% as she agreed to do in the beginning. At the last minute, this buyer changed her mind and refused to honor her contract.

The poor sellers. They were distraught. But I was not about to give up, even though the sellers were almost ready to walk away. See, this is the secret to a short sale. You can't give up. Just because buyers cancel or lenders refuse to negotiate, if you keep pushing, you can make something work. You need perseverance. Creativity helps. Other agents would cancel the listing and get on with their lives. Well, other agents probably would not want to tackle a HAFA short sale in the first place. They have more common sense and less patience than this agent.

Enter buyer #3. Time to change tactics. No loan problems here, because this buyer could pay cash. I called the first lender and asked if I could produce a CMA showing declining values, would that bank accept a lower price. Turned out the bank wasn't really interested in receiving market value as much as it was in dumping this loan. Every so often it works out this way. We accepted the offer and sent the paperwork to both banks.

The second lender was not as generous. Because the loan had gone to charge-off, the lender wanted an enormous sum of money. It did not agree to participate in HAFA. This was a different department from the negotiator who previously had approved the HAFA. Rules change after charge-offs. Banks aren't required to approve a borrower for HAFA; it's voluntary. However, there was no enormous sum of money to give to the bank. It looked like we had reached a dead-end.

At that point, I took a deep breath and said no. This bank was simply misinformed. I could not in good conscience allow the bank to throw the seller under the bus. Not this little old man and his ill wife. So, I closed my email, shut off my cell and wrote the bank a letter. I explained the sellers' circumstances and literally begged the negotiator to reconsider. I must have touched a heart. The next thing I knew the bank said it would agree to take $6,000 from the first lender and release the seller from liability.

I almost cried with relief. At this point, I think I cared more about the situation than the seller did. There comes a time when sellers can become apathetic, and I believe these sellers were about there. But in the end, they received $3,000 and a full release of liability. The HAFA short sale closed yesterday. Those other two buyers? I'll remember them and the horse they rode in on as well. Just not fondly. A bigger person would forgive. I'm not that big.

Some buyer's agents do not know that when a buyer and a seller sign a purchase agreement for a short sale listing, they have entered into a binding contract to buy a home. I don't really know why agents often treat a short sale like the red-haired stepchild, but it's a real transaction just like any other real estate transaction.

This means if the buyer elects to cancel, a buyer can do so. The RPA contract put out by C.A.R. is written in favor of buyers. Probably because buyers sue more often than sellers. Sellers are typically happier after closing than buyers. It's rare that a seller feels that he or she got the raw end of the stick. But buyers? Whole 'nother story.

Some people believe that the only time a buyer cannot cancel is after all contingencies are removed, and that's a big fat lie. They can still cancel. Buyers can always cancel. But in that event, they could get sued because they don't have a contractual right to cancel, although that's where they will argue.

If a seller does not sign a buyer's cancellation, simply out of spite, a seller can be facing a $1,000 fine. The seller has no right to ignore the cancellation, if the buyer is within the time period to cancel. But that's after 30 days. So, you can't really force sellers to immediately sign a cancellation unless you're standing over them with a sledge hammer, and no agent has the inclination to do that.

But what happens when it's the other way around and the sellers want to dump a buyer? How is that handled? Before my sellers cancel buyers from a short sale transaction, we give them a chance. It's the fair and equitable thing to do, even if they are not fair and equitable to us. Besides, contracts stipulate. We send them a Notice to Perform. We spell out what we want them to do, and if they don't do it, we can unilaterally cancel them.

However, if you as a buyer wants to cancel, you need to sign a cancellation of contract. Not a withdrawal of offer and not an addendum. Buyers sign the top and bottom portion and date it, along with escrow information to release the earnest money deposit. Buyers also need to state a reason for the cancellation. When buyers sign a short sale addendum, agreeing to wait for short sale approval, the buyer is supposed to wait during that period of time. But bottom line, if a buyer doesn't want to buy, nobody can make 'em.

For more questions about a Sacramento short sale, call your Sacramento short sale agent, Elizabeth Weintraub, at 916 233 6759.

There are times in which I will behave myself. Not always, you can count on that. But when it's important, I can manage to do it. I step up to the plate. And I pride myself on that ability. After all, I am a Sacramento short sale agent. This means in today's market I possess super powers.

Don't believe me? You try closing a few short sales yourself and see what you're up against. It used to be a lot easier. I'm not sure what happened but lately it's the super powers that do the closing, not me. By super powers, I mean the people I rely upon, and they constantly out-perform themselves. My team members, transaction coordinator and escrow officers, not to mention my fellow real estate agents in Sacramento who represent the buyers. They all do an astonishing and amazing job.

If you'd like to see me behaving myself and talking about Sacramento short sales, you can catch this Elizabeth Weintraub YouTube video. Alternately, you can tune in to the program tonight on Channel 17. I did a public outreach broadcast a week or so ago. It's for a nonprofit, Americans Helping America. I think the show is at 10 PM. That's past my bedtime, so I'll have to ask my husband to tape it.

I don't have a lot of time to do things that I don't get paid to do, and when I do have the time, I like to make sure it involves lying on the beach with my husband somewhere warm and drinking Mai Tais. However, I also agreed to host a celebrity real estate forum next month. I think I need my head examined. There are only so many hours in a day.

But you know what they say, right? If you want something done correctly and expeditiously, ask a busy person to do it. You want to sell a short sale in Sacramento? You call Elizabeth Weintraub, 916 233 6759.

Every once in a while, I run into a client I have to reject. You'd think that as a successful Sacramento short sale agent I would want to work with everybody in Sacramento, but I don't. I don't respect people who would lie, cheat and steal. Sorry -- I'm not an asshole politician and I don't have to put up with that crap.

It's not a judgment call thing, if that's what you are thinking. Because people who would lie, cheat and steal expect others they hire to lie, cheat and steal right alongside with them. I don't live my life that way. No amount of money would convince me to start, either.

Besides, I enjoy an excellent reputation. I've worked hard to earn it. When a buyer's agent advises her client to enter into a contract with my client, I expect cooperation and consideration. I give the same in return.

So, if you are looking to game the system, don't call me. I don't want to work with sellers who strip homes in foreclosure. Nor do I want to associate with sellers who have no intention of doing a short sale but simply want to avoid having to move. Some of these people hear that a short sale can take 6 months to 2 years to close, so they latch on to a Sacramento short sale agent, hoping they won't have to make a payment for 2 years and can stay put. They don't really intend to sell.

That's dishonest.

If you want to sell your home in Sacramento as a short sale in the shortest time period possible and with the least amount of hassle, I'm your real estate agent. If you don't, go make somebody else's life miserable.

I get a lot of phone calls from buyer's agents in Sacramento asking me who the lender is on a short sale. They are wising up and realizing that not every agent in Sacramento who lists a short sale is likely to close that short sale except, perhaps, for me. So, their broker has given them a list of questions to ask a Sacramento short sale agent. The problem with this approach is they don't know what to do with the answers they get.

They think multiple loans is a bad sign, which is not true. They hear Bank of America and they shudder, which is also not true. Bank of America has stepped up to the plate over the years and dramatically improved its short sales. If you are a seller who has a Bank of America loan, you are actually sitting in a primo position and you might not realize it. Don't listen to the hoo-haw among the neophytes. Bank of America is a great short sale bank.

I close a lot of Bank of America short sales. There are different types of B of A short sales. Some are Fannie Mae; they could be Freddie Mac or even a HAFA short sale. It would not be so hot to do a Fannie Mae HAFA short sale or a Freddie Mac HAFA short sale, but those are another long story, which I can explain if I take you on as a client and you have such a loan.

They could also be a Bank of America FHA short sale or a Cooperative Short Sale or a traditional short sale. You've got almost as many choices for a short sale at Bank of America as you've got loan options. And they are all different. A client laughed as she got off the phone with B of A saying it's just like ordering a pizza. Do I want pepperoni or sausage?

If you'd like to know about a Bank of America short sale for you in the four-county Sacramento area, call this Sacramento short sale agent for more information at 916 233 6759. I'll say it again: I close Bank of America short sales. I know how Bank of America operates (it changes all the time). I stay on top of this stuff. You're in good hands.

I was asked yesterday if an agent should tackle an FHA short sale or leave that type of short sale to the pros. For starters, I don't believe any seller should be held at the mercy of an agent learning how to do a short sale. The agent either has negotiated and closed a bunch of short sales or the agent hasn't.

If the agent is not a short sale expert, that agent should not learn how to become an expert at anybody's expense, much less a client's. That agent should work under supervision. As a Sacramento short sale agent, I speak from experience about that. When I started negotiating short sales in 2006, I didn't jump into the water blindfolded. But few agents can afford to be supervised or are willing to be supervised. So, here is my secret for doing an FHA short sale.

First, realize that FHA will not make it easy. FHA has 2 faces. The face of a borrower taking out an FHA mortgage and the face of a borrower in default or about to go into default. The rules are different for both. They are at odds with each other. On the one hand, the government wants to help and on the other it does not.

FHA will do its own appraisal. It will be a full blown HUD appraisal, not a BPO. Before you price that short sale, look at the comparable sales and the pending sales, because the pendings and active short contingents will be your comparable sales at closing.

FHA will not allow a 3% buyer closing cost credit. That's not to say you can't get an exception because, believe it or not, I have obtained an exception for an FHA short sale, but those are few and far between. This will, of course, eliminate almost all of your FHA buyers for that short sale. Remember the part about the two faces of FHA? FHA will guarantee a loan for a buyer to buy a home as long as it's not one of its own or one about to become its own.

You can get a 1% concession without much trouble. The key to an FHA short sale is the net to FHA. This is the secret. You don't have to meet the sales price set by FHA, but you do have to meet the net. The net is 88% of the appraisal. See, this is why you should have paid attention during math class. The best way to meet the net without messing with the sales price is to lower those closing costs. This means moving some of them to the buyer's side of the HUD. And there you have it. Straight from your Sacramento short sale agent.

Tip: If you can't figure whether the loan is an FHA loan, look at the original sales price vs. the original loan balance, and you'll find your answer if the balance is near 97-98%. Odds are 95% LTV is a conventional.

If you are shocked by the widespread of mental illness found in the study from the Mental Health Services Administration's National Survey on Drug Use and Health, you probably do not work in real estate. The study shows that 1 in 5 people suffered from a mental illness in 2010. Heck, I could have told you that without any such study. Because I am a Sacramento short sale agent.

Who else encounters such a vast number of people in their intimate settings? You might think, oh, maybe a bartender, a hairdresser or a lawyer, but no, it's the real estate agent.

I get to interact with people via email, text, phone and in person. In their home and out of it. I see all kinds. We short sale agents employ a plethora of communication methods in our business, so we tend to experience the whole person and not just a fragmented portion. That fact that 20% of our population is off their rockers is not news to me.

What's hard is coming to grips with the fact that we can't help. Agents are natural givers. It's one of the reasons we are in the business, to help people. Not only is there too much liability attached to such efforts, but it's absurd to try. We are not psychiatrists. We are not social workers nor psychologists.

The best we can do when dealing with people from another planet is to stay grounded on Earth.

I could say the seller should have called this Sacramento short sale agent sooner in the process. But so many drag their feet to the last possible worst moment. I could say the buyer should have increased his offer by $2,000 when I asked him to do it. But many buyers are dumb. I could say a lot of things about why this particular short sale went to public auction instead of to closing, like the rest of my short sales do. It is very, very rare to lose a short sale to auction.

Part of the reason is the investor is Fannie Mae. It's a well kept secret in short sale circles that Fannie Mae prefers to foreclose. Fannie Mae is a quasi-government entity. So, all of this talk you hear about how the government wants to prevent foreclosures and keep people in their homes is not necessarily true. It's a good sound bite but it's not the truth.

If the path to foreclosure is shorter than the path to short sale, Fannie Mae will choose the short cut.

I received the phone call that the seller wanted to avoid foreclosure and do a short sale about 3 weeks prior to the trustee auction. Against my better judgment, I took the challenge, listed and sold the home. We submitted the paperwork. This was last fall. Got the trustee's sale postponed. So, in one sense, we did buy the seller about 3 months of time. But in the other sense, they still lost their home. In a flash. Without warning.

Greentree asked us about a month ago to increase the offer. It was only a few thousand too low. But the buyer refused. At that point, Greentree said no problem, it would still submit the offer to Fannie Mae for approval. But yesterday, when we called to verify the home was pulled from the scheduled auction, Greentree said Oops. We didn't have time to call you. The investor, meaning Fannie Mae, rejected the offer and did not want to issue a counter. They instead demanded we go to immediate auction.

And that's how a seller can go from being told an approval from Fannie Mae will take 3 weeks to Oops, I did it again. Kind of gives new meaning to that Britney Spears song. Although, I prefer it performed by Richard Thompson. From now, on this is Greentree's signature song. But they don't deserve Richard Thompson's version. The least the damn bank could have done was call the agent. I don't know which is worse. Greentree or Fannie Mae.

Potential short sale sellers in Sacramento, please don't wait to call your Sacramento short sale agent. Don't wait for the Notice of Default to be filed before you take action. Get the process started early. Especially since HAFA, not to mention the 2007 Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act, both sunset in December 2012.

It seems like every time that I list a PNC short sale in Sacramento, buyer's agents don't want to deal with it. They tell me to my face they won't work on a PNC short sale. That's a little bit disturbing. Because PNC approves short sales. Not all of them, and maybe not even 50% of them, but they do often get approved. Especially non-recourse PNC short sales in California.

See, with a non-recourse short sale, the bank, in second position, gets nothing in the event of foreclosure. Maybe the bank gets some money from the government for a foreclosure but not from the trustee or the first lender. I know that lawyers are concerned it's possible the FDIC is funding foreclosures for banks with taxpayer monies, but I have no idea if that's true. I do know that a PSA often make it very profitable for banks to go through foreclosure because PSAs make money either way.

Lately, though, I've been getting a very strange message from PNC on non-recourse seconds. I get the same email over and over. This is not a one-time occurrence. PNC wants to know if the sellers, the buyers or the agents would give them more money. PNC says it is not "rejecting" the short sale, even though it is. So, that tells me there are lawyers advising PNC to be careful with the language it uses so the government won't see that PNC is, indeed, rejecting short sales.

Because agents are broke, buyer's lenders won't let buyers contribute and, because of SB 458, it's against the law for the seller to contribute. Sellers with purchase money loans are not giving PNC any money and PNC knows it. There is always a very small fragmented chance that the first lender might cough up a little bit more than $6,000 or 6%, but it's not really very likely.

So, what is PNC's angle? Why is PNC rejecting these non-recourse short sales? Who is paying them?

All week I've been receiving emails from other agents who subscribe to the Sacramento MLS. They are commenting on my marketing comments for a particular short sale and laughing. I feel it is appropriate to use a little bit of humor in real estate. That's because I am a troublemaker. See, I own it, straight up. You can't be an effective Sacramento short sale agent and not be a little bit rebellious. I tend to buck the system. It's in my nature.

When a short sale bank asked me if I would call a seller and list this short sale, I agreed. I had no idea of the condition of the property. Is condition important, you might ask? Not really, because in a short sale price is king. As long as the price reflects the condition, somebody will buy it. Of course, the price needs to satisfy the bank as well, which means somewhere near market.

I remember a water-soaked property from several years ago as a result of pipes bursting. Mold growing the size of basketballs. Seems like every few years pipes freeze in Sacramento and explode. I have another home in Orangevale that got flooded yesterday. But somebody will buy it. Eventually. People, you've gotta keep the heat on! I know that sellers of short sales want to cut expenses, especially when the home is vacant, but for crying out loud, don't turn off the heat! 

If your home floods, I'll have to be creative. You see, it's not every day a real estate agent experiences the luxury of being completely honest in her advertising. Most of the time, we are trying to lure buyers into a home. We aren't trying to sell the home online, as some people think. We're trying to get the buyer inside. Once the buyer gets inside, we hope the buyer will be overjoyed, and overcome with excitement enough to plunk down a deposit. We rely on emotions to sell homes.

However, this home is not one of those. I was expecting something completely different. The exterior is deceiving. It's actually pretty cute, stucco and stone with a fenced front yard. I was unprepared when I walked inside. You might think I can't really advertise a property this way and sell it, but that would be an incorrect assumption. I already have 2 offers. My description reads:

FIXER UPPER. SOLD 'AS IS.' FEATURING ROTTING PUMPKINS SQUISHED INTO LIVING ROOM CARPET, COMPLETE WITH A BUSTED-UP LAWN MOWER SITUATED NEXT TO THE LOVELY FIREPLACE. SOME DOORS AND KITCHEN CABINETS BASHED, AND A DRAWER MISSING, BUT YOU'LL PROBABLY WANT TO GUT THE KITCHEN ANYWAY. WARNING: DON'T OPEN THE REFRIGERATOR OR SNIFF THE MURKY WATERS OF THE ABANDONED FISH TANK.