Loss Mit Services

Not all Mortgages Qualify for a Short Sale

Posted on 06. Apr, 2018 by ctlms in Blog, Foreclosures, My Blog, News, Real Estate, Short Sale, foreclosure

Not all Investors will agree to a short sale.

Things are constantly changing in the world of short sales.  These days, since the expiration of the Home Affordable Program, in 2016, change seems to be a constant theme.

One of the ever growing trends over the last few years has been Delinquent Loan Sales.  This is when the Investor that owns the mortgage, takes a large number of delinquent loans, pools them together and auctions them off to buyers of bad debts.  Usually, these are multi-million dollar pools of loans.

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and even FHA are selling off delinquent loans these days.

Once that loan is sold, the rules change.  No longer are the rules for loss mitigation dictated by the prior owner of the loan.  This new Investor that owns the loan, dictates the rules. Usually, this will also result in a servicing transfer.  This is where the loan is transferred to a different company to service it on behalf of the new investor.  The buyers of these bad debts specialize in buying delinquent accounts.  They of course, pay less than the amount owed to acquire those loans.  And they often send them to be serviced by servicers that more like debt collectors, than they are like mortgage servicers.  This means reps at the bank tend to be less cooperative and rude.  This can make for a more difficult short sale transaction if one is even allowed.

Some of these new Investors are actually not allowing short sales at all.

It does not matter what the offer is.  Unless they are being paid in full, they will not accept an offer on the property.  So far we have seen them be willing to consider a loan modification, or a deed in lieu of foreclosure, but not a short sale.  This still leaves options for the homeowner to avoid foreclosure.  But if they don't know that a short sale is not possible, and market the property for several months, only to then find this out, it may be too late for one of the other options.

So determining if the current investor that owns the loan will consider a short sale, is crucial at the beginning of working on a short sale.  Though this can be a little difficult.  Some servicers will come right out and tell you that this investor will not consider a short sale.  Which is in everyone's best interest to know up front.  However, not all of these servicers are so open.  Some will refuse to tell you who the investor is and will refuse to tell you anything about what they will or will not consider for a workout option.  They want the homeowner to fill out a complete workout package first.  Then they will spend the several weeks to months it takes them to review that, and come back and let the homeowner know what options are available.  For those servicers, we have to use some legal rules to request the investor information in a format that they have no choice but to respond to so that we can determine who the investor is.  We know who is not allowing short sales.  So if we find out the loan is owned by them, we are able to tell the agent and the seller this information so they do not waste any more time thinking a short sale is possible.

We have unfortunately seen a few cases where we were contacted after there was already an offer on the property.  We then learned the investor will not consider any offer.  Obviously, no one was happy.  Best to find this information out before there is a buyer in contract.  This is the reason for this article.

I want agents to know that not every property qualifies for a short sale these days. That information needs to be determined early on to avoid going too far along on a lost cause so the homeowner can look into other options before foreclosure gets too close.

Luckily this has been a pretty low percentage of the files we see, and we see a lot of files.  But it is happening and we have seen close to a dozen of these already in 2018.  Most of which we were able to determine before an offer was received on the property, since determining the investor on the loan has always been one of our first priorities for new files anyway.

In conclusion, whoever is working on the short sale negotiations needs to determine who the investor is that owns the loan, and ask the servicer if they will consider a short sale.  This should be done at the very beginning, preferably before the property is listed for sale, or at least as soon as possible after it is listed.

Sean Wilder

Loss Mit Services