Hollister CA – Many people mistakenly think a short sale is adversarial. "I will fight that banker and convince him to let me short sale and walk away from the upside down debt," they think to themselves. That is not how short sales actually work. Most negotiations are not adversarial. In fact, most short sale negotiators are just normal people. Click here to discover how other sellers successfully executed a short sale and avoided foreclosure. They go to work each day and go through their files. There is a lot of paperwork and reports to be filed. Most of them don't get out of bed looking forward to a tough negotiation. They simply have to process their file in accordance with the guidelines. The banks have budgeted money to write down mortgages on short sales. The CEO (or someone simi... 07/21/2011

Hollister CA – You might think it is an embarrassment to sell your home as a short sale. "My friends will laugh at me when they realize I owe more on my house than it's worth," some people think. The reality is that many Americans are in your same position. In fact, some experts think that over one-quarter of all homeowners are upside down. Click here to discover how other sellers successfully executed a short sale and avoided foreclosure. In fact, this statistic is even worse in areas where the housing market has taken a big drop. You have nothing about which to be embarrassed. On the contrary, you should be proud you are handling your affairs in a responsible manner. Short sales usually reduce your lender's losses by 20%. This means you are actually doing your part to help the housing... 07/20/2011

Hollister CA – Short sales have a reputation for taking a long time, but they can drag on even longer if the paperwork isn't submitted to the lender in a timely manner. When the Stop Foreclosure Institute first started doing short sales, it was hesitant to submit anything to the lender until it had a 100% complete package. Click here to discover how other sellers successfully executed a short sale and avoided foreclosure. That caused the short sales to drag out a lot longer. After a little while, we learned to submit the paperwork as quickly as possible to the lender. It usually takes 30 to 60 days for the lender to assign a negotiator to the file. That gives us plenty of time to track down any missing paperwork. We realized we were wasting time if we waited 30 days until everything was... 07/19/2011

Hollister CA – A few years ago most agents didn’t understand short sales. They didn’t want to get involved in them because of the extra work required. Click here to discover how other sellers successfully did a short sale and avoided foreclosure. Short sales take two to three times as much work. The extra effort can be draining at times. Some agents openly admit they hate short sales. Is that the type of person you want working for you? Others believe it is wrong for a seller to walk away without a deficiency judgment. I have heard some agents say that people should be able to walk away from their "obligations." Do you think that type of agent is going to push hard for the bank to waive a deficiency? (By the way, that is one of our missions at the Stop Foreclosure Institute. We want ev... 07/18/2011

Hollister CA – Many homeowners think they have lots of time. "We'll put out home up for sale in a few months. I know the bank is working to foreclose on it, but we can wait," they say to themselves. In order to have a successful short sale, your agent will need time to submit everything to the lender and for the lender to process it. Click here to discover how other sellers successfully did a short sale and avoided foreclosure. In addition, it can take a month or more for your home to sell. Buyers don’t always materialize in two to three days. If you are less than a month away from a foreclosure sale date, then we can help you. But every day after that makes it harder. If you are less than a week away from a foreclosure sale, it is unlikely we can help. Your lender will have spent mont... 07/15/2011

Hollister CA – Here is a case study of homeowners who wiped out $101,279 in upside-down debt and built a brand new home at the peak of the market. Click here to discover how other sellers successfully executed a short sale and avoided foreclosure. They were forced to sell for job relocation a few years later and found themselves upside-down, despite that fact they had put over $50,000 down when they built their home. They had no choice but to short sell the home. They put it on the market, and it sold several months later. At first the lender wanted a promissory note. But they refused to accept it. The short sale was declined, and the home was put back on the market. A few months later the home sold again. The short sale was submitted to the lender. The sellers told the lender they wou... 07/14/2011

Hollister CA – No one wants a deficiency on a short sale. It’s not your fault the housing market crashed. In fact, some people say the banks and Wall Street are what caused the crash. Get my Free, Step By Step Loan Modification Guide by clicking here. Here are four ways you can reduce the deficiency amount on your short sale. 1. Negotiate with the lender. Many lenders will settle for substantially less than what they are owed. For example, we have seen lenders settle for as low as 10 cents on the dollar. In one case, the lender lost over $100,000 on a short sale, settling with the home owner for a $10,000 promissory note to be repaid over 10 years with zero interest. Lenders will reduce the amount to settle for over time. They know that the longer they go without being paid, the less l... 07/12/2011

Hollister CA – Most people short selling their homes do not want to repay the deficiency. And in most cases, the lender allows them to walk away with no deficiency. But that is not always the case. Some banks are very pushy when it comes to the deficiency and won’t approve the short sale unless the borrower accepts a deficiency. Get my Free, Step By Step Loan Modification Guide by clicking here. Some home sellers have told the Stop Foreclosure Institute that if the lender won’t approve the short sale without a deficiency, they will simply allow the institution to foreclose on the property. This seems like a good strategy on the surface, but it could end up costing a homeowner even more money in the long run. That is because the homeowner loses control over the condition of the home whe... 07/12/2011

Hollister CA –We had a question about FHA short sales yesterday. We did some research on FHA short sales as a result, and we stumbled upon something interesting. We have a list of all of the things FHA considers legitimate hardships for a short sale. Click here to view the actual list from FHA. The good news is that if FHA considers something a hardship, then it is likely most lenders agree. Get my Free, Step By Step Loan Modification Guide by clicking here. Here is the list of things FHA thinks are a legitimate hardship for a short sale. Illness of principal mortgagor Illness of mortgagor's family member (Extraordinary medical expenses are part of the equation.) Death of mortgagor's family member (Extraordinary expenses are part of the rationale.) Marital difficulties Reduction in inc... 07/08/2011

Hollister CA – The Stop Foreclosure Institute recently received a question from Tonia about short sales. Apparently Tonia has been misled by her lender. Get my Free, Step By Step Loan Modification Guide by clicking here. Here is Tonia's question about short sales. "I've been trying to sell my house for over a year now and have since remarried and moved into my husband's house. "I told the realtor I am willing to do a short sale, so she called my mortgager (short sale dept.), and they said to just send in the bid. Well, they received a bid but will not accept it. "They said it is because I haven't gone through the loan modification process that FHA loans have to go through first before a short sale can be done. I don't want to modify my loan. I want to be dismissed from it. "I'm current... 07/07/2011

Hollister CA – Some sellers think that if they sell their house for more money, they are less likely to have a deficiency. Let me explain why that is not true. Get my Free, Step By Step Loan Modification Guide by clicking here. Another realtor recently told us about a short sale in which she was involved. This realtor was representing the buyers purchasing the house. The short sale negotiation company the sellers were using told the sellers that unless the house sold for $295,000, the sellers would have a short sale deficiency. Because of this, the sellers wouldn’t accept the buyer’s offer. I told them that couldn’t be true. Here is how short sale negotiations work. A lender is losing money on a short sale. In most cases, it's losing a lot of money. Losing just a little bit more money ... 07/07/2011

Hollister CA – The Stop Foreclosure Institute recently received an email from a recent short sale seller. We had helped him short sale his house. Get my Free, Step By Step Loan Modification Guide by clicking here. Here is his email. "Hi, I hope all is well. I am getting back to you on my credit scores. My score went from 663 in Feb. to 770 in June. "I know this is counter intuitive but must be because my outstanding debts were reduced. I am happy with this. Julio." I agree with him. I think the reduction in debt actually helped his credit score. We see so many people who are leveraged over their heads. They keep paying everything on time because they don’t want bad credit. But they can’t get a loan because they owe too much money. So even though their credit is good, they still can’t ge... 07/07/2011

Hollister CA – If you have a foreclosure or short sale on your credit report, it will lower your credit score quickly. In the near term, the decrease will be much more than it will be a few months down the road when it starts to inch its way back up. Get my Free, Step By Step Loan Modification Guide by clicking here. The credit reporting bureaus weigh the most recent activity more heavily than the distant past. Taking action now to build up the most recent activity is a great way to help your score rebound. So for now, here are the things you should be doing from this day forward to keep your score improving. First, keep your report clean and clear of NEW negative items. This means you need to pay on time, every time on open credit. You must not have any new collection accounts or charg... 07/01/2011

Hollister CA – The next step in your path to an improved credit score is to do what they say on the shampoo bottles: Rinse and Repeat. Get my Free, Step By Step Loan Modification Guide by clicking here. In the Rinse and Repeat phase, you just keep working their system. Here’s what I mean: You send in a dispute, maybe disputing the date that the account was opened. The credit reporting bureau can’t verify it, and it pulls the whole listing off your report! You can’t keep submitting the same dispute reason over and over again to the bureau, as it will view you as a nuisance and dismiss your disputes as frivolous. Also, don’t bombard these folks with your disputes; you won’t get the desired results. But you can dispute information that needs to be verified. The suggested order of ways to ... 07/01/2011

Hollister CA – The next step in your credit repair process is a very important one. This is the time where you check the results of your efforts so far. Get my Free, Step By Step Loan Modification Guide by clicking here. The credit bureaus have now sent you their results, including a new credit report and a letter telling you what has changed on the report based on your disputes. Don’t just read what was sent and file it away! Make a copy of it, and have it ready to file. Take out your file with the original copy of your credit report and put it side by side with the new report. Take out your copy of the letter you originally sent to the bureau that laid out all the things you were disputing. Go through and compare these disputes against their updated credit report. Their summary might ... 06/29/2011

Hollister CA – The next step in the process of getting a cleaned up credit report is the one that takes the least effort but the most patience: WAITING. You’ve done your part to get the ball rolling, and now the credit reporting companies have to do their part. Get my Free, Step By Step Loan Modification Guide by clicking here. During this phase the credit reporting agencies have 30 days to investigate. I use the term loosely here because the methodology not very investigatory. The agencies take the claims and whittle the dispute down to a two-digit code that gets checked against a reporting database called eOscar for verification. They are afforded 30 days to complete this step--unless the person disputing has gotten the credit report from annualcreditreport.com, which allows the agenc... 06/28/2011

Hollister CA – I mentioned in the last note that you’ll need to keep a file of records about your credit restoration process. This is an important part of the process, and it deserves a bit more than a brief mention. Get my Free, Step By Step Loan Modification Guide by clicking here. The credit reporting companies have 30 days (by law) to investigate and handle the disputes submitted to them. This is why you submitted everything through certified mail. That enables you to record the time firmly within which the credit reporting firms must respond. But it’s more than that. This file will become important for a long time for you. Many people successfully removed items from their credit reports. Later they saw those same items show up again on their credit report months in the future! Havi... 06/27/2011

Hollister CA – Once your strongly worded credit report dispute letters are written to each of the three credit reporting companies, then it is time to get it into the hands of their dispute department. The goal is to get your letter read, taken seriously, and responded to. Get my Free, Step By Step Loan Modification Guide by clicking here. **Make sure you make a copy of whatever you are sending to the credit bureaus.** Just keep all your credit reports, letters, etc., in a file so you can use these later. (This will be important.) Send your letter, a copy of the credit report with the items you are disputing noted in Sharpie, and a copy of your driver’s license to each of the credit reporting companies. This step CAN be a bit tricky, even though it should be the easiest step of all! Her... 06/24/2011

Hollister CA – The next step in going over your credit reports is to really rank the items being reported about you to find ones that are the most negative. Rank the negative items with the MOST negative ones given the lowest ranking. Get my Free, Step By Step Loan Modification Guide by clicking here. You want to rank the ones that will cause the most damage to your credit score. Here are the most damaging items (in order of damage amount): bankruptcy; foreclosure; repossession; loan default; court judgment; accounts in collections; payments that are past due; payments that are late; being denied credit; inquiries to open new credit. One thing to note about disputing things on your credit report: items like court judgments, foreclosures and child support arrears are verified by a differ... 06/24/2011

Hollister CA – Once you have gotten your credit report, the next step in the process of restoring your credit score is to go over it with a critical eye. Analyze what the report says. Get my Free, Step By Step Loan Modification Guide by clicking here. Put aside any emotion that looking at the report might stir up; you need to look at it objectively. First, make two copies of your credit report. Save the original without any marks on it. You can make any notes you need on one of the copies and put the other copy aside for a later step. Your credit report will show all sorts of history on your credit accounts. Look for all the negative items on your credit report and highlight each one. The credit reporting firms might not make it easy for you to know what they are considering negative wi... 06/24/2011