Archive for the 'Short Sales' category

Five of the largest mortgage servicers: Ally/GMAC, Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo will have to meet new requirements.

The state Attorneys General foreclosure settlement was filed in Federal Court to make short sale timelines shorter.

As an example, Mortgage servicers will be required to make a decision within 30 days of receiving a completed short sales request package. Another example is that if a servicer takes longer that 30 days on more than 10% of requests, the firm will be considered in "potential violation".

This is a great achievement towards making short sales easier for sellers, buyers and real estate agents. The question will be how will it be monitored and will the penalty be enough to make the servicers act and apply the new requirements.

For more information, contact Emmanuel Scibilia at 617-669-6277 

Massachusetts home owners struggling to make mortgage payments are often doing a short sale to eliminate their debt.

One of the most important things when doing a short sale of your Massachusetts home is to make sure that the debt has been eliminated.

Make sure you hire a Realtor with extensive short sale experience in Massachusetts.

With the help of a local attorney who is also an expert on short sales, the homeowner can be guided to make the process as easy as possible with the goal to not only complete the short sale but also to eliminate the debt.

It is important to eliminate the debt for many reasons including the fact that some mortgages are sold to collection agencies that can come after you and may be able to garnish your wages.

The Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives Program (HAFA) is a short sale program to prevent banks that hold second-lien loans from pursuing collections from homeowners after the short sale.

Under this HAFA program sellers will receive notice that their service company has steered part of the sales proceeds to secondary lien holders in exchange for release and full removal of their liens. It is important to understand however, that this release would apply only to short sales done through the Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives program. Not all lenders will be participating in this program.

So if you are doing a short sale make sure your representative gets the lender to sign off on a complete removal of debt on your property with the help of a team of experts.

About the author: The above Real Estate information on short sales was provided by Emmanuel Scibilia. Emmanuel can be reached via email at emmanuel.scibilia@nemoves.com or by phone at 617-669-6277

Any homeowner who needs to do a short sale will need to write a hardship letter explaining why they need to do a short sale and the reasons why. Based on the letter, the bank will or will not allow the short sale. So this letter is very important and is the only opportunity to explain your situation and to get the bank to work with you on a short sale.

The hardship letter should be personal, it is a good idea to avoid using one you find online. The bank employees read hundreds of them and will be able to tell if it is not personal. It should be no longer than one page explaining your situation and explaining why you can't make the payments anymore, not blaming anyone or the economy. It can be a multitude of factors and the bank should take into consideration all of them.

And don't hesitate to get the help of a professional, whether it is a real estate agent who has experience with short sales or an attorney who specializes in it.