David Rathgeber's

Foreclosures and Short Sales

If price is truly your most important consideration and you do not mind severely limiting your choices, we can search only for vacant properties. Some of these will be bank foreclosures, relocation-company-owned homes, and properties owned by someone who would like to shed the mortgage payment soon. Many of these properties will be priced attractively, but remember; every seller wants to get the highest price possible.

Sometimes the greatest price flexibility is available in properties that are about to go to foreclosure. Many of these are noted as "short sales" in the MLS and can be tricky:

Getting an answer to your offer can take a long time.
The price in the MLS is often negotiated up rather than down.
You cannot rely on the agreed closing date.
About half of all short sales never go to closing, ever.
The home might go to foreclosure before your short sale offer is approved, leaving you to start from GO. (No, you do not collect $200.)

But if this is your need, we can handle it.

I have stories of my own, but an agent friend of mine tells me she wrote 26 short sale offers (in 2008) and not one closed. One local study in 2012 showed that only half of all short sale contracts ever make it to closing.

For additional information on short sales from the
Northern Virginia Association of REALTORS click here.

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