Beware Legal Pitfalls With Foreclosures, Short Sales
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http://realtormag.realtor.org/daily-news/2011/09/26/beware-legal-pitfalls-foreclosures-short-sales?cid=WR09292011:30262&ed_rid=1698691
Short sale and foreclosure transactions can be fraught with potential legal problems for real estate professionals. And as the number of these transactions continues to skyrocket, agents need to be careful, Stella Ling, managing senior counsel of the California Association of REALTORS®, told a crowd at CAR’s REALTOR® Expo last week.
Short sales success rate is only about 50 percent, Ling said, so “the best thing to do is to prescreen the short-sale listings.” For example, she encouraged agents to look for home owners who have refinanced in the mid-2000s and to avoid listings where a second trustee lender can come back for a deficiency through a judicial foreclosure or might not agree to a short sale. Ling also recommends checking to see if the seller has considered a bankruptcy.
Another danger she points to is “reverse staging.” With reverse staging, sellers trash the property in order to devalue the property. Ling says real estate professionals should ensure sellers don’t do any damage and if they suspect any, they should reconsider proceeding with the transaction.
“If a seller does reverse staging, destroying their own home, what else are they going to do? What other misrepresentations are they going to make?” Ling told the crowd of real estate professionals.
Ling also suggests when handling REO transactions that real estate professionals read the REO addendum carefully that lenders often add to the purchase contracts. Oftentimes, these addendums make buyers give up a lot of their rights, she notes.
Source: “Avoiding the Legal Pitfalls of Distressed Real Estate,” Inman News (Sept. 23, 2011)
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As a Reno/Sparks real estate professional, I encourage all questions and comments on the Reno/Sparks real estate market or any of the articles posted in this blog. Please feel free to use my back door to the MLS and search the houses available in the Reno/Sparks and most Northwest Nevada neighborhoods. I can be reached by email @ chance@ballard-company.com http://www.myspace.com/chancegates . You can also follow me at http://www.twitter.com/chancegates . If you are behind on your house payment and looking for a loan modification, go to making homes affordable For a free copy of my report “5 Steps For Reno/Sparks Homeowners To Prevent Foreclosures” go to my about page http://chancegates.com/about and ask for more information on preventing foreclosures. or to request a modification. If the modification fails, contact your local real estate professional to help short sale your home. To make sure there is no deficiency judgment a homeowner might find it necessary to hire an attorney.













