The Short Sale Process

[RomiSam11]

In today's , investors have many discount properties at their possession. Everywhere you turn there is another property up for sale. Some of those properties can not be sold because of price. A lot of those homeowners must sell at the prices they are asking because they either paid too much for the house when they bought it, or they refinanced their equity out of their home. To add on to that problem, a lot of those homeowners took on an adjustable rate mortgage or an ARM. An ARM is a mortgage loan where the interest rate adjusts based on the market indexes. Some of them even took on interest only loans.

An interest only loan is a loan where a homeowner doesn't pay down the principle on their home. They are only paying the interest. But you can pay principle too if you send the bank extra money stating that it should go toward the principle only. Most of these types of loans usually come with a balloon payment. Having a balloon payment means that your loan is due in full at the end of the balloon term.

Now that the ARM is kicking in or the balloon payment is coming due, those homeowners cannot afford to keep paying on an adjustable rate mortgage. And they most certainly can not come up with the money to pay the mortgage in full. Well they have two options, they can take a chance at refinancing their property or they can sell through a short sale. Most people will not be able to refinance their home in today's real estate market because banks are not as lenient as they were a year or two ago. So that leaves them the option of doing a short sale on their home. A short sale comes about when a lender is willing to take less for a home than the amount due. Lenders will usually do a short sale if it is more beneficial than going through the foreclosure process. Short sales are less expensive for the lender than going through foreclosure as well.