Video Summary
What do you need to know before buying a house on the short sale? Well first off, let’s talk about buying a house. If you’re a buyer, there’s no difference between buying a house on a short sale then it is buying a regular house because a short sale only means that the lender, which is the seller’s obligation to pay off, is receiving less than the full amount of the loan.
So therefore, they are short on the payoff and that is a situation between the seller and their lender. So there is no difference between buying a house in a short sale than there is from just buying a house whenever the cash deal other than the practical problems of how long it takes for the lender to approve the transaction.
So you don’t know whether you’re going to have a deal or not and it may take a considerable amount of time before you hear from the lender. So you need to have a great deal of patience as far as that’s concerned before you know whether you actually have a deal or not.
One of the other things that I strongly recommend is doing a lot of due diligence and suggest you do that in advance although you may not have a deal, is to determine how, if there’s any problems with the house. Make sure there are no sinkholes or other problems and that the seller has the obligation of disclosing to you any matters that may material effect the value of the property, which are not readily observable.
However, that representation isn’t any better than the person who gives it so if it’s false or they didn’t do a good job on it, you can sue them. But if they’re on a short sale, they probably don’t have any money, so you come up with an empty remedy since you don’t want to spend a lot of money with lawyers suing someone that doesn’t have any money.
So it’s really important that you do a lot of due diligence to make sure that there is no defects with the house such as sinkholes, the roof isn’t leaking or going to have to be replaced, the air conditioning system, make sure you’re not in a flood plain where you’re going to have to pay a lot of flood insurance. All of these things need to be checked out in advance whenever you’re buying a house on a short sale.
But basically as far as the buyer is concerned, you have a contract between the buyer and the seller and the seller is the ones with the problem trying to get the lender to take less than the amount that is owed. So if you have anymore questions and need any representation in purchasing a house, give me a call it’s (727) 847-2288. Thank you.