Question... (for sale, real estate, foreclosure)

[Rich_CD]

Can a real estate agent or other professional explain this: "Being sold as short sale, subject to lender approval."

[GregTraub]

Many posts on this in the Real Estate forum that go into detail.

Basically it means that the owner owes more on it than what they are trying to sell it for. The owner can no longer handle the payments, and in an attempt to avoid foreclosure they solicit an offer for whatever the market will bear, present it to the lender, and negotiate the bank to accept the offer that won't pay off the loan and have the deficiency forgiven (still bad for the owners credit but not as bad as a foreclosure) The owner gets to live in the house while it's for sale even if they aren't able to make any payments on it, and the bank avoids the legal costs and time involved with a full blown foreclosure.

There are ALOT of these going on here, I even represent 2 right now. They are very tough to get through in some cases, and not all are great deals, but there are some that you can get a great price on since it is technically a distressed sale. The only real downside to buying a short sale vs. a normal sale, is it takes a looong time to hear back from the bank in the negotiation process.