Selling Your Home Through a Short Sale
April 21, 2011 by Heidi Franklin
Facing foreclosure can be very stressful for a homeowner. If you owe more than your home is worth in today’s market and have a hardship, you have options to help you get rid of the home with dignity and sell through a short sale. First, you should consult with your CPA or professional tax person and an Attorney who know about bankruptcy and real estate.
Here are some examples of a hardship:
- Family illness or injury
- Illness or injury in the extended family – particularly if it forces relocation
- Job relocation when the property is equity deficient
- Job loss or significant income loss
- Divorce or split of domestic partners
- Adjustment in mortgage payment or unforeseen increase in living expenses
- A mortgage payment that is simply un-manageable
After consulting with a CPA and Attorney and deciding that a short sale is best for you situation, there are two kinds of short sales. HAFA (Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives) and a regular short sale. The HAFA short sale is only for those who occupy or have occupied the subject home within the last year and the loan was originated before January 1st, 2009. There is no recourse or promissory note that you would have to pay later. The loan servicer gives you $3,000 at closing to help you with relocation expenses. If you want to try this way, you must try a loan modification first, which is called HAMP (Home Affordable Modification Program). If you are turned down for this program, you can go forward with the HAFA short sale. If you do not occupy the home, you may be able to sell the home through a regular short sale.
When choosing a real estate agent to represent you, ask if they are a Realtor. A Realtor must abide by a higher standard of practice and ethics. Also, ask if they are trained and certified to handle short sales. Do not pay a real estate agent or Realtor any fees up front or at closing to handle and negotiate the short sale for you. It is illegal. Using a local Realtor and/or one who knows your real estate market will be to your best advantage. Most banks will not accept an extremely low price for the home. Putting a low listing price will only get low offers, then cause a problem with getting the short sale approved and possibly end in foreclosure instead of a sale for you.
I hope you find this information helpful in making a decision to sell your home, or please give to someone you know who needs help.
Please contact me, Heidi Franklin at (909) 772-8842 (cell)
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My Favorite Home Poems
August 9, 2010 by Heidi Franklin
As a Realtor I enjoy anything related to “Homes”. So I thought I would share with you some poems.
A Home Song
I read within a poet’s book
A word that starred the page:
“Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage!”
Yes, that is true; and something more
You’ll find, where’er you roam,
That marble floors and gilded walls
Can never make a home.
But every house where Love abides,
And Friendship is a guest,
Is surely home, and home-sweet-home:
For there the heart can rest.
- by Henry Van Dyke
- by Robert William
The House With Nobody In It
WHENEVER I walk to Suffern along the Erie track
I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black.
I suppose I’ve passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute
And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it.
I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things;
That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings.
I know this house isn’t haunted, and I wish it were, I do;
For it wouldn’t be so lonely if it had a ghost or two.
This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass,
And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass.
It needs new paint and shingles, and the vines should be trimmed and tied;
But what it needs the most of all is some people living inside.
If I had a lot of money and all my debts were paid
I’d put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade.
I’d buy that place and fix it up the way it used to be
And I’d find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free.
Now, a new house standing empty, with staring window and door,
Looks idle, perhaps, and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store.
But there’s nothing mournful about it; it cannot be sad and lone
For the lack of something within it that it has never known.
But a house that has done what a house should do, a house that has sheltered life,
That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife,
A house that has echoed a baby’s laugh and held up his stumbling feet,
Is the saddest sight, when it’s left alone, that ever your eyes could meet.
So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track
I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back,
Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart,
For I can’t help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart.
- by Joyce Kilmer
