One of our buyers called on a for sale sign she saw while driving around in a Northwest St Johns County neighborhood that she liked. Our awesome buyer called us very excited after talking to the agent about her listing. The other agent had told her that there were no other offers on the property so the process should go fast.
We are experienced in Jacksonville short sales and this made no sense. Being very curious, I started jumping into the public records to research the situation. After ten minutes I knew that this short sale would be anything but fast, if it was successful at all.
The lien holder is a lender that is notorious for sitting on files for months and months and then sitting on them a little longer. This particular lender sometimes still does not have a file assigned to a negotiator six months after submission. This particular buyer needed to be in a property within a a month making a short sale property a very poor option.
Thankfully, the buyer ended up finding other homes that they liked far better that actually met their needs better. This helped avoid a situation in which we would have had to discredit the other agent...something that we feel like we should never have to do and definitely never want to do.
If you are going to be involved in Jacksonville short sales (either as a buyer or seller) please work with an agent who specializes in short sales and has completed them for both buyers and sellers. We have heard from many buyers and sellers who have been made highly unrealistic promises. I do not think that anyone is setting out to intentionally deceive them. I think that very few people in the real estate industry currently have really good working knowledge of short sales and how to successfully complete them.
We feel strongly that buyers and seller should have reasonable expectations from the beginning. This translates into much greater odds of a successful short sale closing in the Jacksonville real estate market. "Fast" is not a word that frequently describes short sales.
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