Short Sale: Is Your Buyer Qualified? Is the Realtor?
The attorney at my officer earlier this week was an absolute font of short sale knowledge, though often he said he didn’t know. Short sales really are the wild west… every one is different. Every seller has a different situation, every lender will address a short sale differently.
What does this mean to you? It means that the agent who has the listing may not be qualified to deal with a short sale. It means if you’re the seller that the buyer may not be qualified to buy a short sale. But how do you know?
It’s fairly straightforward to know if the buyer is qualified to purchase a short sale with one simple question (beyond the obvious “Can they buy?”):
- Does the buyer really give a hoot about the house?
If the answer is no, then they are qualified because buying a short-sale can be a long, harrowing process that could take months - even a year. If the buyer has to be moved by X date, then they need to find another house. Real buyers should be patient, qualified to buy, and patient.
But is the Realtor qualified to sell the house? Again, some questions asked in advance can let you quickly know if you should waste your time on the short sale experience:
- What is a short sale? (Captain Obvious strikes again, but you’d be surprised at how many agents really DON’T know)
- How many loans are there against the house?
- Have you submitted a short sale package?
- How is the lender and seller planning to address all the outstanding loans?
If the agent can answer these questions, then clearly they are clued in as to what the process will be like. That’s an agent who really does have experience and is qualified to handle the transaction.




