Real Estate business has changed

You can’t help but have noticed that, along with the Gulf Oil Crisis and the National Healthcare Bill, there has been a tsunami of foreclosures and short sales which have negatively impacted both the banking and real estate industries. In essence my business has changed dramatically over the past couple of years!

For my dear friends who haven’t heard from me as often as I would have liked, I wanted to assure you that we have not only survived these challenges but have actually thrived with our efforts to help clients who have been tragically affected by this market. Following the Darwin theory of survival, we have adapted!

As you can see by the dates of my past blogs, it has been a while since I have posted one. I can honestly say that it has been due in large part to the huge volume of distressed sales we have been dealing with. We have helped over 60 families in our community avoid foreclosure. Short sales are labor intensive transactions. The average length of time to complete one has been about 6 to 7 months with two going over 18 months. In most cases, we go through 2, 3 up to 5 or even 6 buyers before we get an approval with the buyer hanging in there!

So why do them you might ask. We feel a strong obligation to do our part to help people who find themselves in a true hardship facing losing their home. Even though it was not our practice to put our clients into some of the awful loans that got us where we are now, there is not a real estate professional out there that did not benefit from a buyer’s agent getting one of their listings sold and closed with one of those loans. Add to that many of our clients refinanced with predatory lenders and found that their good, fixed rate loan was replaced with a variable rate loan with a low teaser rate that lasted for about