how to do a short sale

Each mortgage company has their own set of processes through which they decide whether or not to accept a short sale, and while there are many similarities, each has its own requirements for approval.

As a third party mediator, we have a distinct advantage in negotiating with your mortgage company. Here is how it works:

First you will need to list your home. Easy enough, then fill out the brief application forms that we will provide to you. Once all of the forms are completed we will fax them to the mortgage company to let them know that we are working on your behalf.

Then the lender will issue a “workout package”. This is the lenders list of instructions and requirements for considering a short sale.

Some of the things they will likely require are:

1. Financial Application – fill out a form the bank supplies.
2. Hardship letter.
3. Last 2 paystubs for all borrowers (including L&I and unemployment benefit.).
4. Last 2 years tax returns.
5. Last 2 bank statements.
6. Last 6 months of Profit and Loss statement (if self employed)
7. Third Party Authorization which allows someone other than the borrower to obtain your personal information.

Here is what I mean by not giving up. We were doing a short sale with WaMu and GMAC. Washington Mutual held the first trust deed and GMAC had the second. The first lienholder was owed $345,000 and the secondholder $65,000.

Our purchase contract was for $306,000 with $6,000 of costs.

$306,000 vs $345,000 + $65,000 =$410,000
-6,000
$300,000 $410,000
- 22,480 of sellers closing costs
$277,520

So WaMu was being asked to take a shortfall of $67,750
and GMAC was being asked to take a shortgage of $65,000.

As a second lienholder, GMAC would stand to lose $65,000 if the house was sold at a foreclosure sale, however, they still held an interest in the property. That interest would have to be extinguished before the property could be sold. So in order to do the short sale, we needed to get a “lien release” from GMAC.

WaMu claimed that according to their internal bank policy, they could only pay GMAC the amount of $2,000 for a secondary lien release but this amount was not enough for GMAC; and they refused to reduce their lien.

The foreclosure sale date was scheduled for April 22. And though we continued to call GMAC to accept a total payment of $6,000 and they refused.

Two days after the foreclosure sale, April 24, GMAC said that they would accept the $6,000. But it was too late, right? The sale date had already passed!

At this point, most people would have given up hope. The deal was dead. The first had extinguished the claims of the second lienholder. Stick a fork in it. The turkey was cooked.

We called the first lienholder to see if they would still give us another chance. After all, what did we have to lose? It was then that I discovered that WaMu had postponed the sale date for one month. Why? Maybe because we had called so many times and they knew that we had worked so hard on this file.

To make a long story short, we resubmitted the paperwork, including the GMAC lien release and everything went through. YAY!

Moral of the story: don’t give up hope. Even when times look dark there is still a ray of hope somewhere, if you keep looking for it.