Look for next year in real estate to be the year of the short sale.
Banks are being encouraged by the government to do short sales rather than foreclose. This is good. Short sales are better for neighborhoods than foreclosures.
Even though banks are leaning towards short sales now, they are still very overloaded with short sale files and are taking way too long to process them. The end result is the market is loaded with short sale listings that can take four, five or six months to process and that may or may not close. This leaves sellers in the stressful position of not knowing what is going to happen with their financial situation and buyers wondering whether they are actually going to close escrow or should they continue shopping for a suitable property.
Some banks are working to pre-approve short sales before they actually hit the market and these banks say they can close approved short sales in about the same amount of time as a conventional sale. This is good news and I’m looking forward to actually coming across one of these transactions.
So in 2010, the year of the short sale, lets hope that banks devote even more resources to making the short sale process faster and easier on sellers, buyers and everyone involved in the transactions.
Tags: real estate, san diego real estate, short sale, short sales