4 Questions To Ask When Contemplating a Short Sale

by Rae Catanese

in featured, Selling Home as Short Sale

Tips to selling your home as a short sale in the Tampa Bay Area:

What is a short sale? In basic terms, a short sale in real estate is selling your home for less than what you owe the mortgage company. This is often defined by the term being ‘Underwater’

In order to qualify, you’ll need to answer the following questions:

  1. Are you in a financial hardship situation? For instance, have you gotten a divorce or lost your job and had a significant loss of income?
  2. If so, and you can provide financial documentation justifying that you can no longer pay the mortgage, you may qualify. If you are self-employed you’ll have to provide a profit and loss statement to the bank as well.
  3. Are you underwater? In today’s real estate market, can you sell the house for what you owe the bank? If you aren’t sure, just ask a Realtor who handles short sales to run comparable sales for the prior 6 months; also known as a Comparable Market Analysis (CMA).
  4. Have you stopped paying your mortgage?short sale tampa

Who pays Realtor commissions?

The bank will pay Realtor’s commissions, back taxes, delinquent HOA fees and closing costs that would be associated with a typical transaction.

Underwater Photo Courtesy of Steven Fage engineur.com

How long will it take before I can buy another house after doing a short sale?

Even if your credit score is within lending guidelines, as it stands now, you won’t be qualified to purchase another home for 2-3 years.

Get Advice From A Listing Agent Who Specializes in Short Sales Before You Start The Process.

You may also want to read:
The INSIDE SCOOP on Short Sales-Tampa Bay Statistics, How a Short Sale Works and more..
What to expect when listing a short sale

Prudential Tropical Realty is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender. Even if you accept this offer and use our service, your lender may not agree to change your loan. If you stop paying your mortgage, you could lose your home and damage your credit.



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Rae Catanese

Like what you are reading? Subscribe by email to become a Tampa Real Estate Insider! Rae Catanese, a Tampa Realtor for almost a decade and creator of The Tampa Real Estate Insider. Rae has been quoted by The Tampa Bay Business Journal, HGTV'S frontdoor.com, The Tampa Tribune, and the St. Petersburg Times.

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{ 1 comment }

irma March 21, 2011 at 4:01 pm

This is a great article. Thanks Rae!

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