Tag Archives: Johnson County Short Sales

Interested In Buying A Kansas City Or Johnson County Kansas Short Sale Listing?

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Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market

In today’s market, many home buyers in Kansas City and Johnson County Kansas are looking for deals on Short Sales and foreclosures. For many, the term Short Sale is synonymous with bank foreclosure listings, yet that couldn’t be further from the truth. Bank foreclosures are listings that have already gone through the foreclosure process, the bank now has a clear title to sell the property and the bank is looking to get the properties off their books. But Short Sales are much different. In a Short Sale, the homeowner is upside down on their home but it has not (yet) been foreclosed on. In other words, the home seller is HOPING their lender will accept a Short Sale, so the home can be sold before it goes into the foreclosure process.


Short Sale means a short payoff of what is still owed on the home. In many cases, the seller’s lenders doesn’t even know what’s about to hit them. Though it can’t be a surprise generally speaking when a lender is notified a seller is requesting a Short Sale, the reality is that many sellers are not yet behind on their payments. So this could mean the first notification a seller’s lender gets that a loan is about to go bad is when a listing agent sends the lender a Short Sale package. A Short Sale package includes the real estate contract (with whatever buyer is trying to purchase the home) and a laundry list of other items (i.e. proof of job loss, etc) that the seller’s lender will demand if there’s any chance of the Short Sale getting through.

If you are planning to buy a home in Kansas City, Johnson County Kansas, Overland Park or the surrounding area, there’s certainly many complications that come with Short Sales that aren’t encountered when dealing with a typical re-sale transaction. There’s many additional hurdles to consider, including whether the listing agent assisting the seller knows how to properly handle a Short Sale. From my experience, most agents are not experienced in dealing with Short Sales. If they’re not, the chances of a successful Short Sale just shot down well below a coin flip. So it’s important that your Buyer’s Agent politely quiz the listing agent on their expertise with the Short Sale process.

Short Sales can take 60, 90, 120, 150 days or more to get the closing table (many never do close), so you MUST have patience AND time on your side or Short Sales are not for you. You’ll be asking a lender to accept less than what the seller owes on the home and they’ll need to study the offer, do a detailed market analysis and come to a conclusion on either accepting your Short Sale offer or choosing to take the home back by way of foreclosure.

Click here if you are a homeowner considering selling your Kansas City area home in a Short Sale.

Posted by Jason Brown

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Deciding Whether Selling Your Overland Park Home In A Short Sale Makes Sense?

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Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market

If you’re behind on your mortgage or thinking you’re about to get behind on your mortgage payments, now is the time to sit down with an Overland Park Realtor and discuss your options. But don’t sit down with just any agent, make sure you sit down with an agent who understands the Short Sale process. Most agents don’t have a complete grasp on the complicated process and getting hooked up with the right agent can easily double or triple your chances of success.

We go through a checklist of questions to help determine whether we think a homeowner has a good chance at achieving a successful Short Sale. A Short Sale can be more or less complicated depending on whether there’s just one lender involved or whether a second loan has been taken out on the home. Finding out who all has an ownership interest in the property is critical in devising an out plan for each party involved. We need to know if a seller has received a Notice of Default from their lender because time is of the essence more than ever when dealing with a Short Sale.

We always want to be sure a homeowner has exhausted any possibilities to stay in the home, such as refinancing or asking their lender whether a loan modification is possible. Every homeowner’s situation and goals will lead to different questions being asked. We are constantly working to get a complete picture of what we’re up against. So that we can see all lien’s that have been placed against a property, we get our home sellers a free preliminary title report so we can see exactly what it’s going to take to achieve a successful Short Sale.

There’s a lot of work to be done to get a lender to even CONSIDER a Short Sale, much less accept one. From pin-pointing the hardships that have occurred to cause the situation to helping clients explain these hardships to their lender, we’re there every step of the way. If you’re in a distressed situation with your home and think a Short Sale may be a possibility for you, we’re happy to discuss your situation.

Posted by Jason Brown

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Some Preliminary Aspects Of A Short Sale For Sellers And Buyers To Consider

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Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market

If you’ve been following along, you know that Short Sales can be a great alternative to foreclosure for homeowners who are upside down on their homes. But Short Sales aren’t easy and if you’re thinking of buying or selling a home in a Short Sale, there are a few things to consider before starting the process. For starters, sellers will have to accept giving up information to their listing agent that they’d be able to keep confidential in a typical resale transaction.


When dealing with Short Sales, the listing agent will need to be in direct contact with the seller’s lender and will need honest, accurate information from the seller if there’s any chance of achieving a successful Short Sale. Sellers should also consider they likely won’t be able to buy a home in the next 12 to 24 months. For buyers, Short Sale listings are often in better condition than foreclosure listings. That could mean saving thousands of dollars. Generally speaking, the condition of a Short Sale property will be some where in between a typical resale property and a foreclosure property. Same goes for the typical sales prices on Short Sales.

I don’t recommend a buyer or seller attempt selling in a Short Sale if they don’t have a lot of patience. It’s not an easy process. It might be 10 times harder than a typical real estate transaction. It can take 60, 90, 120… days to get word from the seller’s lender on whether they’ll accept a Short Sale. If you’re a buyer who needs a home that can close in a predictable time frame, just go ahead and eliminate all Short Sale listings off your list.

Also consider that the lender is going to rely almost exclusively on a Broker Price Opinion (BPO)  that it will order from a third-party real estate agent. If the value indicated in that BPO or appraisal is too high, the bank is likely to say no to the Short Sale and foreclose on the property (believing they’ll net more that way than by accepting the Short Sale). Don’t forget that the seller’s lender is under absolutely no obligation to accept a Short Sale – and thus a loss – on the home.

Another critical aspect of the Short Sale process is the listing agent involved. The listing agent is certainly the most important person in the transaction. Without a solid listing agent, a good buyer’s agent will be spinning their wheels. The listing agent is the only one who can contact the seller’s lender, so it’s worth checking with a listing agent before you make an offer to be sure the agent has a clue of how the process works.

Posted by Jason A. Brown

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If You’re Upside Down On Your Kansas City Home, Consider A Short Sale Before Walking Away

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Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market

If you’re upside down on your home, you may wake up some mornings thinking about walking away from your home. Millions of homeowners in the U.S. are faced with this dilemma. But I’ve never met anyone happy to simply walk away from their home, uproot their family and damage their credit. But for many, the mortgage owed on their home is too large of an obstacle to overcome… and these two options seem to be the only options to many. But there’s a third option that more and more homeowners are using to deal with housing problem — that option is a Short Sale.


With a third option in the mix, it’s a lot to consider but just know that many homeowners who are successful in selling their home in a Short Sale are able to finance another home as quickly as two years down the road.  That possibility alone is exciting to many who were sure they weren’t going to able to get financing on another home for years to come.  Many homeowners will also ignore the Short Sale possibility because they don’t have the money to pay the closing costs. When I explain to sellers that their lender will pay all of the closing costs, including the real estate commission, most are very surprised. If they’re going to accept a Short Sale, your lender UNDERSTANDS you don’t have the money to pay these costs. So they factor them in when considering the Short Sale.

If you’re going to achieve a successful Short Sale, you’ve got to get your home under contract with a buyer. From there, you’ve got to submit the contract to your lender for review. Why would a lender agree to accept a Short Sale? Because if you aren’t able to continue making your payments, they realize that foreclosure is the other option. And lenders don’t want more REO properties on their books. When deciding to accept a Short Sale, the lender will have the home appraised – hopefully factoring in issues with the home – and decide whether it makes sense to accept the Short Sale (or decline it and foreclosure on the property and sell it later once they’re in control of the property).

The first step to getting the process moving is hiring a listing agent. Selling a home in a Short Sale is much different from a typical resale transaction and you’ll absolutely need an agent who knows what they’re doing. The initial list price of the home will need to be at market value, though the home is unlikely to generate interest at the initial list price. You need to start at market value however to show your lender you’re doing all you possibly can to sell the home for as much as possible. After a short amount of time on the market, you’ll want to start dropping the price incrementally until you locate a buyer — remember Short Sale buyers are not going to pay market value for a home that has to go through the unpredictable Short Sale process.

To make the Short Sale process as smooth as possible for sellers, I have a Short Sale specialist in my group to negotiate with your lender (with your approval). So while I’m busy working to sell the home and get it through the typical sale process, my negotiator is working with your lender to get their approval on the Short Sale. But don’t worry because I take care of the costs of having the negotiator working to move the process along. Buyer’s agents are becoming more aware of how the process works and asking questions up front. If a buyer’s agent senses the listing agent has no clue what they’re doing, they’ll likely advise their buyer clients to look elsewhere. So be sure you don’t just hire any agent and should you have any questions about the Short Sale process, please contact me to discuss your options.

Posted by Jason A. Brown

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