Mortgages & Financing

[basso]

I am interested in buying a short sale from the lender. How can I find out who the lender is?

[Phil McCarty]

Hi Basso,

The seller in a short sale is the homeowner, not the lender. The seller is in a position in which the proceeds of the sale are insufficient to pay off the mortgage, and they intend to ask the lender to accept a short payment as payment in full. So, whereas the lender has a significant amount of influence in a short sale (if they do not agree to forgive a portion of the debt, there is no sale), they are not a principal and therefore cannot sell the property.

You may be able to purchase a foreclosed property directly from a lender or other foreclosing entity. In this case the lender is the owner of the property and would be a principal in the transaction with the authority to sell the property. The name of the owner is a matter of public record which you should be able to obtain through your county recorders office.

Each state handles foreclosures differently. You should contact a real estate expert in your local area to be sure you have a full understanding of the procedures and implications of this type of purchase.

Best of luck to you!

Phil

[Brad Snyder]

Hi Basso,

As Phil put it, you can't buy a Short Sale directly from a bank simply because the bank doesn't own the home. It really is up to the seller at first with Bank Approval second. If you want to buy directly from the bank you need to buy a Foreclosure and quite honestly you will not get a better deal buying a short sale then you would a foreclosure. The bank does not have to show the losses on their books as a short sale until they agree to the deal, the foreclosures they are already showing so they want to sell them. Still doens't mean a greater discount, the banks know what the market values are no different then a seller does, and as anyone can see throughout this whole foreclosure mess, the banks have no problem doing things their way, and they do.

Good Luck out there and hope you find a great home.

Brad

[Wayne King]

As other posters have stated: you can't buy a short-sale from the lender because they don't own the property.  They own the loan(note). In some cases they will sell the note at a discount. That would most likely require all cash. And, you would then be responsible for completing the foreclosure and any baggage that comes along with that.

In some cases a person buys the note at a steep discount and then refis the existing owner and makes the spread.

Check out auction.com and look under the notes tab.