If you are underwater on your mortgage, but need to sell your home, you may be looking to short sale your property. The hardest part, for the homeowner, in the short sale process is usually filling out the financial statement and gathering necessary paperwork for the file. This takes a lot of emotional energy for the borrower who will be applying to short sale their property. This forces you to look at your complete picture and summarize it on a couple sheets of paper.
A good Jacksonville short sale specialist will prequalify you for your short sale and explain what you should realistically expect based on your financials.
The banks need to see how much you are spending every month. Depending on your negotiator, sometimes they will study your bank statements and look for "discretionary spending" and ask for that amount in the form of a note. For example, a trip to Starbucks every morning for coffee and a donut adds up. They might see that as real money you can give to the bank for the next ten years instead of your favorite barista. Or they may not care. Sometimes they will decide you have to bring money to the table for your short sale closing. Or sometimes they won't. Sometimes they will just downright turn down your short sale because they think you are trying to hide something...this is the situation you don't want to be in...ever.
You absolutely have to fully and accurately describe your financial situation to the bank.
Do not ever attempt to hide anything. You have to paint a full financial picture on your financial statement that is submitted to the bank in your loss mitigation package, even if it is not favorable to your case. This, unfortunately, is not what some homeowners want to hear, but it has to be said.
If you have money to bring to the table...you need to expect them to ask if you want to short sale your property.
Part of our job is to go through the financial data you submit (we have finance and accounting degrees with audit and tax backgrounds) and look for holes in the information before it is submitted. We can not submit anything to the bank that we know is not complete or true. This also speeds up the process on the bank end because we don't later have to waste weeks getting supplemental information to your negotiator once they ask for it.
Your Jacksonville short sale has the best chance of being approved if you are 100% honest and forthcoming about your financial situation and why you can no longer pay for your home.
