Santa Maria Real Estate: Tips to Buying Santa Maria Short Sales
Santa Maria City Hall
1) Be prepared for an “as-is” purchase. Many times there is deferred maintenance on short sale listings. Often owners in financial distress stop performing maintenance on the home either willfully and because they lack the funds. You can ask a short sale seller to make repairs, but often they are unable or unwilling to do so since they are losing their home. You can also approach the short sale lender and ask that they allow the cost of the repairs to be deducted from their “net” but often the answer will be no, even if the repairsare required by your lender in order to originate your new loan. This can make purchasing a short sale difficult if you are using VA financing which prohibits the buyer form paying for VA required repairs.
2) Be prepared to wait for approval. Short sale approval timelines have notably improved, especially with Bank of America where the time period could be 6 months or more to now around six weeks (in my experience) with the use of the Equator processing system. However overall, banks just can’t seem to act that quickly, and if the property has two lien holders it can take additional time to align the two approvals so you can actually close the transaction.
3) Be prepared for negotiations from the bank. Just because the seller agreed to a purchase price doesn’t mean the bank will. If you think waiting 5 months for a response is aggravating, try waiting five months and then having a negotiator try to increase the purchase price. Yes, banks will try to do this. It is aggravating especially when the offer is a fair one.
Short sales can be exceptional bargains, but they have their pitfalls for buyers. Make sure your agent knows the right questions to ask before getting you involved with a short sale.
Check out current Santa Maria short sale listings here:
In July 2006, Mint Properties opened an office in the Mission Creek Plaza on Santa Maria Way. Tni’s stated aim is to offer the highest quality representation and professional service to her clients. Independence affords her the ability to avoid a volume driven approach; the result is prompt, reliable, individualized service coupled with straightforward advice. Indeed, she brings the same level of professionalism to real estate as she did to the law.
You would be surprised how many times I am asked this question with amounts varying from as little as $5000 to $50,000. And my answer to that is an easy no. I even had someone ask me about an $81,000 home in Foxenwood Estates! When I ask these potential buyers where they are getting this type of information, they point to the various foreclosure related websites. After sampling a few, for properties that are in pre-foreclosure (i.e. a Notice of Default has been filed) the amount of the payments that are in arrears, or the amount of the second loan owing on the property shows up as the list price, when in fact the home may not even be listed with a broker.
