Category: Orlando Foreclosures

Orlando Short Sales Soar as Home Foreclosure Sales Fall

Posted on by Jenny Zamora

Short Sales Outnumbering Foreclosure Sales in a Big Way.

The Orlando foreclosure crisis is nowhere close to being over, but the light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter every day. Orlando short sales are a win-win for everyone involved. Short sales [which occur when homeowners sell their homes for less than what they still owe], also close much faster than foreclosure sales, and they relieve lenders of the responsibility of maintaining vacant homes as well as not having to worry about the properties getting vandalized.

It makes you think,… with soo many benefits in it for the lenders the question is why weren’t they doing this the whole time?

 New Developments in Orlando Real Estate

There have been some changes made in the rules of Orlando short sales lately. For starters, lenders no longer have a choice. The Federal Housing Finance Agency announced this month that mortgage servicers will be required to review and respond to short sale offers within 30 days and make final sale decisions within 60 days.  All of this is supposed to take place in June of this year, meanwhile, lenders are scrambling to train enough staff to handle the demand for new short sale files.

A Win-Win Situation for Orlando Homeowners

By going the short sale route both the lenders as well as the homeowners win. Homeowners get to walk away from debt-free, the lender re-cooperates some of their money back and everyone gets to move on with life.

Doing a short sale is usually the best option for people. Statistics just from our own office indicate that 90% of the time homeowners choose the short sale route after consulting with one of our Orlando short sale specialists and all the options have been explained to them. With all the incentives being offered by lenders these days, it just makes the most sense in most cases.
With lenders being much better equipped to process short sales now, it’s absolutely the fastest way for borrowers to walk away from their distressed properties. Also, credit repair is much easier to achieve when you’re dealing with some late payments on your record as opposed to a foreclosure.

Cash for Keys for some homeowners.

For many homeowners, banks are offering cash incentives for the homeowner to agree to a short sale. We’ve gotten our clients from $3,000.00 up to $20,000.00 back at closing. This is a tremendous help for homeowners in making the transition into a new homeless financially painful.

Short Sales are better for Orlando neighborhoods.

Banks are terrible property owners, foreclosed homes often stay vacant for months and even years, meanwhile, the home deteriorates due to lack of maintenance. To make things worse, vacant houses might as well have targets painted on them in certain neighborhoods. Thieves go after things like fixtures, appliances, copper pipes, etc. Banks are unknowingly cannibalizing their own assets with foreclosures.
Short sales put new owners in vacant homes much faster than foreclosure sales.  This is good news for Orlando neighborhoods that have been hit hard by the mortgage crisis. New homeowners are typically pretty excited about being new homeowners and the first thing they usually do is work on the curb appeal of their new home. Many times this creates a domino effect and before you know it, surrounding neighbors will also want to improve their curb appeal.


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Growing Demand for Orlando Real Estate is Absorbing Shadow Inventory

Posted on by Jenny Zamora

 

Orlando Realty Sales are slowly overtaking the number of distressed properties coming on to the market

Chief Economist Dr. John Tuccillo says “The fear is that the inventory of delinquent and foreclosed loans will be released onto an already weakened market,” , explaining the findings of a new report conducted by the Florida Industry Data and Analysis department. “But the reality appears to be different, even here in Florida where distressed properties make up a significant portion of the market.”

Lenders have no reason to flood Florida’s real estate market with more homes especially if it ultimately affects their profit. Think about it, if the Orlando real estate market gets flooded with homes all at once then this would drive prices down significantly. Many people thought that lenders were holding inventory back on purpose when the true cause of this hold up was because of all the robo-signing issues they had to figure out.

Tuccillo says, “We looked at the recent history of distressed property listings and transactions relative to normal market data, as well as estimates for the shadow inventory, and came to some conclusions about the likely course for the future.”

 

These are the findings of recent studies done using data from the Florida MLS

* Even though Orlando Florida remains one of the Country’s hardest-hit areas for distressed property sales, foreclosure sales keep dropping while Orlando short sales continue to steadily rise.

* Prices for all residential properties including both distressed and normal property sales have been steadily increasing.
Orlando Realtors have learned how to cope with distressed properties in a way that stabilizes the market. It’s no longer an issue whether the  property is in distress or not.

* Currently, the number of distressed property sales [Orlando short sales and REOs] is more than keeping up with the amount of distressed  properties [90 days or more behind] coming on to the market.
 
 * The number of Orlando foreclosures and REOs were significantly lower in February of 2012 than one year earlier, suggesting slower shadow inventory growth.
 Distressed properties in Orlando will be a common trend for many years to come.  It will be so common that “distressed property” will be considered just another property type to a potential buyer.
 
Orlando Real Estate Broker

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Orlando Short Sale Closed After 3 1/2 Years Battling with Lenders!

Posted on by Jenny Zamora

The longest Orlando short sale in our company history.

I had just had to share this story about an Orlando short sale that we’ve been working on for well over 3 1/2 years.

We started this file in December of 2008 It was a pretty common story; She had a 1st mortgage with GMAC for 434k and a second with Bank of America for 116k and she also owed her HOA $5,000.00 at that point [now $15,000.00].  The big problem was that even though she owed about 570k since she purchased in 2006, her house was only worth 180k at the point when we took her on as a client in 2008.

Throughout this process it was a matter of getting all the stars to line up at once , which when your dealing with 3 different debtors is no easy task. Buyers get tired of waiting, lenders wanted new bpo appraisals done every 6 months, the HOA didn’t want to budge and we had to stop her Orlando foreclosure several times.

No Attorney Necessary.

In the past three years we’ve had 7 solid contracts, 9 bpo appraisals and we stopped the foreclosure sale date a total of 6 times.s, we eliminated her debt. We closed last week with a cash offer for 200k and to top it all off, we got the lenders to give her $7,000.00 back at closing.  By the way, she never once went to see an attorney which means probably saved another 7 to 10 thousand dollars.

Doing the short sale was the best decision for her.

In the end my client got to live rent free for 3 1/2 years and was able to save up some money and turn her life around. We found her a nice rental in Downtown Orlando and she now lives comfortably within her budget. How’s that for a bailout plan?

It’s true that we had to work work many times harder than a typical short sale file just because of constant updating of expired short sale docs  alone, not to mention all the buyers we lost along the way because they got tired of waiting on an approval.

However, when you’re in the short sale business, there is no greater satisfaction than to know that you’ve helped someone solve a huge problem in their life and get a fresh start.

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Orlando Short Sales Overtaking Foreclosure Sales

Posted on by Jenny Zamora
 For the first time Orlando short sales are becoming more popular than sales out of foreclosure.  As a matter of fact, in Florida short sales have outnumbered bank-owned home sales since July.
 
Lenders are favoring short sales more and more these days, with good reason. Short sales have proven to be faster and more lucrative process than foreclosure. Short sales accounted for 24 percent of all home sales nationwide while foreclosure sales represented 20 percent.
   

Top 3 reasons why lenders favor short sales over foreclosure sales

 
•    Taking a home to foreclosure is a long, drawn out process and can take up to a couple of years sometimes. Even then, there are soo many things that can go wrong if things aren’t processed correctly by the attorneys, which happens more often than you would think.
 •    Lenders can avoid paying a ton of money in legal fees. You can’t foreclose on a home without attorneys. I’ve seen attorney’s charge as high as $15,000.00 for  1 single foreclosure case.
 •    Better sales prices on Orlando properties. Statistics show that banks get higher and better offers when they short sale as opposed to the foreclosure sale. Many times it won’t even sell at the auction and it ultimately becomes the banks problem…Again!
 
In the end it’s all about the almighty dollar.
 
Lenders are finally realizing that Orlando short sales are a win for everybody. Mortgage companies are even offering large cash incentives to homeowners who agree to do a short sale. I’ve gotten some of my clients up to $20,000.00 back at closing from their lender. How’s that for a bailout plan?
 

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Orlando Homeowners Have all the Power!

Posted on by Jenny Zamora

We all know how thousands of Orlando homeowners have suffered through this foreclosure crisis since 2007.  There is another group of individuals that is also feeling the effects of all this…Lenders.

The truth is, banks have taken an extensive beating over the last few years and the effects are starting to show. Lenders don’t have many options when it comes to managing Orlando foreclosure properties. Even the usual process of foreclosure has been anything but reliable.

Orlando Homeowners have all the power.

A homeowner with the right strategy can stay in their home for over three years without making a single mortgage payment. I know this for a fact because several of my clients are in this situation.
Fact: It actually costs the lender less money to let the homeowner stay for free and maintaining the property than it does to evict the homeowner and pay to have the property maintained.

Don’t freak out, go see an Orlando Realty professional

I just cringe every time someone comes in to see us and they tell me that they moved out of there house because they fell behind on their mortgage and they thought that the “Big Bad Bank” was coming to kick them out. Unfortunately, most of the time it’s too late to do anything about it because they’ve already turned the key into the bank and moved into a new lease.
It kills me because if they would’ve just come in to see us when everything first happened, they could’ve saved tens of thousands of dollars and lots of stress.

That’s not the way it works!

Here are 3 things that you absolutely need to know if you’ve fallen behind on your mortgage.
1-    Don’t stop talking to your lender! As a matter of fact, call them often and tell them what’s happening with you. Ignoring the situation is the worst thing you can do!
2-    Even if the bank begins foreclosure proceedings, they have to inform you well in advance [in writing] of hearing dates, sale dates, etc. They can’t just kick you out from one day to the next.
3-    Talk to an Orlando Real Estate Expert. It’s free to speak with a top Orlando Realtor and an experienced agent will be able to inform you of all your options and help you come up with the perfect plan for you.

One thing is for sure, there has never been a better time in history to do an Orlando short sale than right now. There are so many homeowners facing foreclosure right now that banks are having to negotiate better and better deals.
We’ve gotten our clients anywhere from $3,000.00 to over $20,000.00 back from the lender depending on what program we‘re able to qualify them for.

Still have questions? Ask me anything, I’m here to help

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