How To Perform A Real Estate Short Sale?

When you perform a real estate short sale, it means you are selling your home at a price that is much less than what you actually owe on it. When things go wrong, you may find yourself in such an unfortunate situation when you have no better alternatives than this. In this age of recession, there are many people have either performed short sale or are on the verge of doing it. The situation may arise when you lose your job and miss several monthly payments. Besides that, sometimes adjustable rater mortgage may also turn out to be a nightmare when you may be forced to get closer to foreclosure because of the rapidly increasing rates. However, the only good thing about short sale is that you can settle the mortgage completely, but the painful side is that you will be losing the home you had taken the mortgage for. Anyways, following is a brief rundown on how to perform a real estate short sale.

The Basics
You contact the loss mitigation department of your mortgage company. You describe your situation to them and request them to accept a lower payoff. The department reviews your case and decides whether you can go for short sale or not. Once your request is approved, the loss mitigation department will guide you with the process. However, there are still plenty of things that you need to take into your careful consideration.

List Your Home With A Realtor
When it comes to performing a real estate short sale, the first thing that you have to do is to get your home listed with a Realtor. But, you have to be a little careful while hiring the Realtor – make sure that he/she is a short sale specialist. Authorize the Realtor to discuss the case with your lender directly. For this, you will have to sign an "authorization to release information" form and fax it to the loss mitigation department of your mortgage company. Once the department receives that form, the Realtor becomes your legal representative agent.

Proof Of Actual Hardship
In order to convince the mortgage company that you are in actual hardship, you will have to submit proof for the same. So, in order to perform a real estate short sale successfully, you are recommended to fax the following documents to the loss mitigation department.
• A signed copy of short sale request document (the mortgage company provides this document and you have to sign it and return the same)
• Title work on property
• A proposal of needed repairs prepared by a licensed contractor
• A list of the regular monthly expenses that you have to pay
• Your income statement
• Bank statement for at least the last three months
• Copies of Tax returns for the last two years
• A hardship letter where you have to explain the reasons why you could not make the payments in a timely manner and why you are not in a position to settle the complete loan at its actual value
• Preliminary net sheet of proposed sale

Once all the documents are submitted, the mortgage company will review the same. If you did everything as described above, there is no reason why your request for real estate short sale should not be approved.