Because of the nature of today’s housing market, short sales are an extremely popular subject.

Since I am located in Florida, we should take a look at this term as it relates to short sales in Florida.

A short sale situation arises resulting from a property owner being upside down on their home loan and they fall behind on their payments.

Being upside down means that they owe more on their bank loan balance than what their home value is really worth.

When this comes about, the bank tells the homeowner that they need to list their home with a Real estate agent to begin the short sale process. The Realtor then determines the market value of the property and lists it at or around that price. Until the Realtor can bring a sales agreement for that home to the bank, they really don’t need to be contacted.

After the sales contract is finalized and written up, it is submitted to the lending company.

This is when the process of a short sale in Florida really can start to slow. After the financial institution gets the sales contract it can very often take ninety days if not more for the lender to reply and in some situations might take longer than 6 months.

Many times is the case when the bank does ultimately reply it can come in the form of a counter offer.

It isn’t too rare with a short sale in Florida that this counter offer is considerably higher than that of the listing price and therefore is over priced for the market conditions. This discrepancy in market price comes about primarily because the lender is basing its numbers on what the house was worth. But the truth is in the current market conditions of decreasing home values, banks commonly are not always up-to-date with the housing market conditions in a certain geographic locale.

Some short sales have a payoff negotiated, although many times the lending institution’s loss mitigation division won’t actually being evaluation until they have the first offer. The procedure is more often than not long and drawn out, and you will not inevitably get a favorable deal.

Sometimes, waiting out a short sale is beneficial but usually it really is such a pain that it’s more advantageous to hold back until the home is in full foreclosure. Due to this bad reputation that short sales possess, sometimes a property listing can be challenging – it might declare that the home is in “pre-foreclosure” or that the listing is “contingent on lender approval”.

When it comes to short sales in Florida, the important thing is to be patient, do your homework, and ask plenty of questions prior to actually submitting an offer. The perfect and most useful question to ask is, “has the mortgage holder negotiated a pay out?” If this is the case, meaning that a payoff has been approved by the lender, then the entire process ordinarily moves a good deal speedier on a short sale.

An important note to take into consideration in all of this is that if a property has a couple of mortgages, each of the mortgage companies that are involved in this will have to agree on any kind of offers. If multiple mortgage organizations are involved in the short sale in Florida, understandably this will mean a more drawn out process and even more challenges to conquer.

With short sales in Florida it’s a huge benefit for you to use a Real estate agent who has experience effectively negotiating this sort of transaction. If not, it will probably be significantly more troublesome to get the deal finalized.

Dealing with and negotiating with lenders and mortgage suppliers is different than dealing with an average homeowner.

There are different forms to fill out, distinctive hoops to jump through and additional communication that needs to happen.

Give consideration to picking out a Real estate agent who has extensive experience in these areas.