Loss Mit Services

How to Vet a Short Sale Negotiator in Ninety Seconds: The Four Exemptions

Posted on 10. Nov, 2026 by ctlms in Blog, Foreclosures, My Blog, News, Real Estate, Short Sale, foreclosure

I get this question from agents all the time: “How do I know the short sale negotiator my seller found is legit?” Good question, and most agents never ask it. Somebody hands over a business card, or the seller finds a company online, and the file goes out the door. There is a check you can run first. It takes about ninety seconds, every piece of it is public, and here is the whole thing.

Why is there anything to check?

Simply put, in Connecticut negotiating a short sale for a homeowner is “debt negotiation,” and debt negotiation takes a license from the Department of Banking. That isn’t my reading of it. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 36a-671 writes “the negotiation of short sales of residential property” right into the definition.

Think about why the state bothered. A homeowner in default is about the easiest person in the world to take advantage of. So the state wants to know who is doing the negotiating, and it wants a license it can pull if something goes wrong.

So then you ask, “if that’s true, why are there short sale specialists advertising all over the place?” Some of them are exempt. Some of them are licensed. And that is exactly what the ninety seconds is for.

Step one: is this person one of the four?

The Department of Banking lists the exemptions right on its licensee page. There are four.

1. Attorneys practicing law in Connecticut. An attorney handling the negotiation as part of the law practice doesn’t need the license. Plenty of good short sales get done this way.

2. Banks and credit unions. They have their own regulators.

3. Licensed debt adjusters. That is a different license, and you can ask to see it.

4. Non-profits. Housing counseling agencies and the like.

That’s it. Read the list again and look for real estate brokers. There is no line for them. A real estate license is not one of the four. I hold a broker license in three states, and none of them is the reason I’m allowed to negotiate your seller’s file. The debt negotiation license is.

Step two: not one of the four? Find them on the list.

If the person isn’t an attorney, a bank, a debt adjuster or a non-profit, they need the license, and the license is easy to find. The Department of Banking posts a downloadable list of every debt negotiation licensee, and NMLS Consumer Access will search it for you too.

The list I pulled is dated November 2, 2026. It shows three companies statewide. One of them is a national non-profit. Mine is one of the other two.

Here is the catch that trips people up. The list shows the legal entity name, not the name on the business card. Loss Mit Services appears as Accredited Home Services, LLC. So if you search a trade name and come up empty, don’t stop there. Ask for the entity name and the license number, then look again.

Step three: not on the list and not one of the four? Ask.

Plainly. “Which exemption are you under, or what’s your license number?” Somebody with a good answer can give it to you in one sentence.

Then take that answer to your broker or a real estate attorney and ask what it means for you. I’m not going to tell you what your exposure is, because I’m not your attorney. I’ll just point out that the federal MARS Rule, at 12 CFR § 1015.6, reaches people who give substantial assistance to a provider they know, or consciously avoid knowing, is violating it. And the FTC’s own compliance guidance names supplying referrals as an example of substantial assistance.

I’m not naming names and I’m not telling you who to work with. The list is public. Check it yourself, and check me while you’re at it.

Can you still help if the house is already listed?

Yes. I hear this one almost as often as the first question. An agent figures it’s too late once the listing is signed, or that bringing in a negotiator puts the listing at risk. It isn’t, and it doesn’t.

I’m the negotiator, not the listing agent. I work alongside you and your seller. You keep the listing, the client and the commission.

Who pays for it? Neither you nor your seller pays anything up front or out of pocket. The buyer signs a separate fee agreement with us, and the fee is paid at closing, only if the short sale is approved and closes. It shows up on one settlement statement, with the same numbers going to every party on the file. A seller who already has an agent is helped through that agent.

The takeaway

Before your seller signs anything with any short sale negotiator, me included, run the check. Four exemptions. One public list. Ninety seconds. If the person passes, great, you’ve lost a minute and a half. If they don’t, you found out before your name was on the referral.

If you have a listing where the payoff is higher than any realistic price, send me the address and the approximate payoff. I’ll tell you within a day whether it’s worth pursuing.

As always, feel free to reach out to me with any questions.

Sean Wilder
Loss Mit Services
860-265-3727
CT Debt Negotiator NMLS #828273
Loss Mit Services is a dba of Accredited Home Services, LLC · CT Debt Negotiation License DN-828273

Short Sales Take Forever: The Honest Timeline and Where the Time Really Goes

Posted on 19. Oct, 2026 by ctlms in Blog, Foreclosures, My Blog, News, Real Estate, Short Sale, foreclosure

“Short sales take forever.” I hear that from agents all the time, usually right before they tell me they stopped taking these listings. And I’m not going to argue with them, because mostly they’re right. The myth isn’t that a short sale is slow. The myth is that it’s slow for no reason, and that nobody can do anything about it. So let’s talk about the real timeline, where the time goes, and which parts you can actually control.

How long does a short sale really take?

Start to close, a short sale typically runs four to six months, and sometimes longer. Lender approval by itself commonly takes 60 to 120 days, and that is before the closing window written into the approval letter. You will not get a normal 30-day escrow out of one of these, and you shouldn’t tell your seller you will.

If you were told two to four months, that’s the old number. It’s the one that got a lot of agents burned. They set an expectation with the seller and the buyer, month three came and went with no answer, and the buyer walked. I’d rather you hear the long number from me now than discover it yourself in month three.

Why does it take so long?

Think about who has skin in the game. The mortgage servicer is the company you send your payments to, and it gets paid every month to service that loan. Resolving a delinquent file faster doesn’t put money in the servicer’s pocket. Behind the servicer there is often an investor who owns the loan and has to sign off, and the bank has been burned on sloppy paperwork before, so it checks everything twice. A valuation gets ordered. A negotiator gets assigned. Files get passed from one desk to another.

So the process moves at the speed of the slowest person in the chain, and nobody in the chain is being paid to hurry. That part isn’t fixable. I’d be lying if I said otherwise.

Where does the time get lost?

Here is what we see on files, in the order I see it. Most of it isn’t the bank.

1. The package comes back incomplete. A missing signature, a form that wasn’t filled out all the way, a bank statement with a page missing. The bank doesn’t call and ask nicely. It sends the file back, and you go to the back of the line. Dot your I’s and cross your T’s, because the bank does care about the minor error.
2. The income documents go stale. The seller sends pay stubs and bank statements, the file sits in review for six weeks, and now the documents are too old to use. Everything gets re-sent, and the clock starts over on that piece.
3. A second lien nobody asked about. A second mortgage, a home equity line, an HOA balance, a municipal lien. If you don’t find it until month three, it sinks an otherwise clean file, because now there is another party who has to say yes. Ask for the title information on day one.
4. Nobody owns the follow-up. A file that nobody calls on for two weeks doesn’t sit still, it drifts backward. Somebody has to be on the phone, every week, with the servicer.

Those four are what an agent and a negotiator can actually control. That’s the reason I want to see a file early, before the first price reduction and well before the buyer is losing patience.

Does a short sale ever move quickly?

Sometimes a lender moves faster than expected. I’ve seen it happen. But a short sale is not a short sale, every one is its own file with its own servicer, investor and lien structure, and I wouldn’t build a plan around the fast one. Plan for the long number and be pleasantly surprised if you get the short one.

What do I tell my seller and my buyer?

Tell them the truth up front. Four to six months, sometimes longer, and nobody can promise how long theirs will take. Nobody can promise an approval either, not me, not the bank’s own rep on the phone. A short sale can hurt the seller’s credit, and I won’t pretend otherwise. And lenders commonly ask for a reduction in your commission, so you want that conversation early, not at closing.

Whether a short sale is right for your seller is a decision for the seller. Questions about taxes belong with a CPA, and questions about the legal side belong with a real estate attorney. I’m neither one.

The takeaway

Short sales are slow. That part of the myth is true. But a lot of the delay is fixable, and the most fixable piece is when the file gets started and how complete the package is when it goes in. Raise it early, get the payoff and lien information on day one, and set the long expectation from the beginning.

If you have a listing where the payoff is higher than any realistic price, send me the address and the approximate payoff. I’ll tell you within a day whether it’s worth pursuing.

As always, feel free to reach out to me with any questions.

Sean Wilder
Loss Mit Services
860-265-3727
CT Debt Negotiator NMLS #828273
Loss Mit Services is a dba of Accredited Home Services, LLC · CT Debt Negotiation License DN-828273

The Divorce Listing Where the Payoff Won’t Clear: When to Call a Short Sale Negotiator

Posted on 16. Oct, 2026 by ctlms in Blog, Foreclosures, My Blog, News, Real Estate, Short Sale, foreclosure

“Neither of them can keep the house, and the payoff is higher than anything we’re going to get for it. Now what?” I hear some version of that from agents who take a divorce listing and run the numbers at the kitchen table. It usually comes a few weeks too late, after a price reduction or two, and after the two owners have stopped being on speaking terms. So here’s the trigger I want you to listen for, and what I’d do about it.

What makes a divorce listing different?

Most underwater listings have one decision maker, or two who are still on the same team. A divorce listing has two owners who want out of the same loan and, in many cases, no longer want to deal with each other.

Here’s the WHY it gets stuck. Nobody is keeping the house. Neither person can refinance it, because the payoff is more than the property is worth, and nobody refinances into a loan bigger than the house. Neither wants to keep paying on it either, since that means carrying a debt on a place they don’t live in, or one they can’t afford alone. So the only exit is a sale, and the sale doesn’t clear the payoff.

Who is actually on the hook?

This is the part that surprises people. In most of these files both spouses are on the mortgage and on title. What the two of them have agreed to between themselves, or what a court has said about who pays what, doesn’t change who signed the note. The lender doesn’t care who got the house in the settlement. The lender cares who is on the loan.

How a divorce decree treats the mortgage, and what it means for each spouse, is a legal question. That’s one for the divorce attorney or a real estate attorney, not for me and not for you. If your seller’s attorney is going to have an opinion, you want to hear it before the listing agreement turns into a surprise.

What actually stalls these files?

Three things, in the order I see them.

1. Both owners generally have to sign. Every authorization, every form, every disclosure, from both people, and often ink signed. When the two of them are barely communicating, one person sits on the paperwork for two weeks and the whole file waits. The agent in the middle ends up playing messenger, and that’s rarely what you signed up for.
2. The clock. A short sale commonly runs four to six months from start to close, and lender approval alone commonly takes 60 to 120 days. That is a long time to ask two people in the middle of a divorce to stay cooperative, stay reachable and keep returning documents on time. Some will. Some won’t. It’s much easier when we all know on day one how long the road is.
3. The late conversation. By the time the third price reduction goes up, the listing has been sitting for months, the buyers who would have made an offer have moved on, the sellers are worn out, and the file starts with a much shorter runway. Most of the damage in these files is time that was already gone before anyone raised a short sale.

What should you do at the listing appointment?

Get the payoff statement first. Not an estimate, the actual payoff, including every lien on the property. Then compare it honestly to where the market is. If it clears with room to spare, you have a regular listing. If it doesn’t, and neither side can bring money to the table or refinance, that’s the moment to ask whether a short sale is worth looking at. Notice I said “looking at.” Whether it’s the right path for those two people is their decision, and it’s something to take up with their own attorneys and a CPA about the tax side. I’m not either of those, and I don’t pretend to be.

And if it is on the table, I’ll be straight with you about what comes with it. A short sale can hurt the sellers’ credit. The lender decides whether to approve it, based on its own guidelines, not on how sympathetic the situation is. Lenders commonly ask for a reduction in commission, and I’d rather you hear that now than at closing. Nobody can promise an approval, including me.

The takeaway

Divorce, a payoff above any realistic list price, and neither owner able to refinance or carry the loan. That combination should make you pick up the phone before the first price reduction. Get the payoff, raise the possibility early, route the legal and tax questions to the right professionals, and let us help you with the part we do every day.

Send me the address and the approximate payoff. I’ll tell you within a day whether it’s worth pursuing.

As always, feel free to reach out to me with any questions.

Sean Wilder
Loss Mit Services
860-265-3727
CT Debt Negotiator NMLS #828273
Loss Mit Services is a dba of Accredited Home Services, LLC · CT Debt Negotiation License DN-828273