If you are trying to buy a short sale in Sacramento -- or anywhere in the country, for that matter -- unless it's a Wachovia short sale, you have no idea how much your mortgage rate will be. Sorry. You could try a loan lock for 90 days, but you'll pay for that privilege, so it's hardly worth it. This is one of the drawbacks to buying a short sale.
You've got to wait for bank approval. You can't lock a loan rate. At the moment, one of my short sales is through Wells Fargo. Readers of my blog know that Wells Fargo is not one of my favorite short sale lenders, to put it mildly. But I don't turn down Wells Fargo short sales because those poor sellers need to do a short sale just like the rest of the sellers in Sacramento. It's not their fault they got stuck with a loan from Wells Fargo.
These particular sellers submitted an offer in early November. Although I have closed plenty of short sales with Wells Fargo in which the sellers were current on their payments, in this particular file Wells Fargo demanded that the sellers be in default. This cost us a couple of months time. So, in all due respect, this short sale did not really start until early January. In the eyes of Wells Fargo, it's only been 8 weeks before it gave us a response.
The response is mostly about a 1% seller credit toward the buyer's closing costs. Wells Fargo also requested another $10,000 or so in sales price, but I quickly remedied that silly request by sending the last 3 comparable sales within a 1/4 mile that sold right around our current offer price.
How did the buyers respond to Wells Fargo? They demanded 5% as a seller concession. If it wasn't so sad it would be laughable. The buyers based that goofy demand on the fact that mortgage interest rates have gone up since November. Too bad, so sad. The truth is nobody cares. Wells Fargo doesn't care. It's not the seller's problem, either. Mortgage rate fluctuations come with the territory when you buy a short sale. If you didn't think your interest rate would change, you didn't think.
Nobody said a short sale was easy. Ask your Sacramento short sale agent what to expect before you plunk down that earnest money deposit and enter into a transaction to buy a short sale.
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Certified HAFA Specialist
My Sacramento Real Estate Listings
Elizabeth Weintraub is an author, home buying columnist for The New York Times-owned About.com, a Land Park resident, and a Land Park real estate agent who specializes in older, classic homes in Land Park, Curtis Park, Midtown and East Sacramento. Weintraub is also a Sacramento Short Sale agent who lists and successfully sells short sales throughout the four-county Sacramento area. Call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. Put 35 years of real estate experience to work for you. Broker-Associate at Lyon Real Estate. DRE License # 00697006.
The Short Sale Savior, by Elizabeth Weintraub, available at Amazon.com.
Lyon Real Estate is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender. Even if you accept this offer and use our service, your lender may not agree to change your loan.
Photo: Unless otherwise noted in this blog, the photo is copyrighted by Big Stock Photo and used with permission.
The views expressed herein are Weintraub's personal views and do not reflect the views of Lyon Real Estate.
Disclaimer: If this post contains a listing, information is deemed reliable as of the date it was written. After that date, the listing may be sold, listed by another brokerage, canceled, pending or taken temporarily off the market, and the price could change without notice. It could blow up, explode or vanish. To find out the present status of any listing, please go to elizabethweintraub.com.
