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