Short Sale Negotiation – Tips for Pre-foreclosure Investing

In short sale investing, one of the biggest challenges you’ll face are negotiations with the bank. Putting together a short sale deal can be lengthy and involve a lot of preparation. Plus, you’ll need to work with the bank to come to a price you can both agree on.

First Contact on the Phone
You’ll start short sale negotiations with the bank by contacting their loss mitigation department. It can be difficult to make first contact with the bank. You may luck out when you first call, if you get an automated response system. Some of these systems will have you input the homeowner’s account number and the phone tree automatically directs you to the correct department.

If you don’t get lucky, your best bet is to call customer service and ask for someone who is qualified to make sales on pre-foreclosures or just ask for the Loss Mitigation Department. If you draw a blank with the person on the phone, try asking for the ‘foreclosures department’, ‘short sale’ department or ‘loan modification’ department. If all else fails try asking for someone in charge of loans and they might be able to direct you to the right person.

Always, always remain polite and calm on the phone. These are people you’ll be dealing with on a regular basis. Once you get that initial phone call out of the way you’ll have the right phone number and name to call every time from there on out.

After you get the right person on the phone, introduce yourself and explain that you are in short sale investing. Let the bank officer know that you are interested in a particular pre-foreclosure and would like to set up a short sale deal. It’s helpful to put together a check list of points you want to cover in introductions and even a short script that you can read from to introduce yourself. Practice the script so it sounds natural.

The Short Sale Package
At this point the bank officer should let you know what materials they’ll need from you to begin negotiations. These materials are sent back to the bank in a short sale package. This package is a way of providing the bank with all the foreclosure information they’ll need, your first offer on the property and is also a way of culling the serious investors from those just expressing interest.

In short sale negotiation, the short sale package is very important. One of the best foreclosure tips you can get for negotiation is to make sure this package includes all the materials the bank has requested and more. It often includes;

a hardship letter from the homeowners,
estimates for any needed repairs to the property,
your estimate of the property’s market value,
copies of the homeowner’s income tax returns and
most importantly your cover letter with your offer price for the property.

Banks will often set aside incomplete short sale packages when they receive them. You may not even be notified by the bank if your package is missing a certain document. So, be sure to double check that package before sending it.

Down to the Figures
Short sale investing usually involves a bantering about of numbers concerning the pre-foreclosure. When the bank receives your short sale package, they will order an appraisal of the property. This is called a Broker’s Price Opinion (BPO) and gives the bank a price to aim for in negotiations. It is usually completed within 10 days of the bank ordering an appraisal, but if they are backlogged it can take longer.

When the BPO is completed and approved the bank contacts you to negotiate a price on the property. The bank won’t tell you what their estimated BPO is on the property, but they will usually talk in terms of price range when negotiating.

The bank officer in a short sale investing deal will try to get as close to their BPO as possible. This doesn’t mean that they won’t accept a price lower than the BPO, they can usually take a deal that’s at least 83% of the BPO. You can usually tell how willing the bank is to accept your offer by the way they negotiate over the phone, especially if they call you back later to continue negotiations.

Your job in a short sale deal is to provide plenty of written evidence for your low offer and back up that information in negotiations. Real estate investing can be a great way to make a high return on your money, even more so when you get involved in short sale investing. However, you’ve got to convince the bank first.