Ask the Kansas City Broker news - November 20th 2009

View another episode of Ask the Kansas City Broker.  This week deals with question on several issues.

First we will deal with short sales.  After a short sale is negotiated between Buyer and Seller the contract is submitted to the seller’s lender for approval.  The property is technically under contract to a buyer at that time.  The lender still must approve the sale and sometimes will give approval only after a change in the terms.  This process can take a long time.  Use a good listing agent to help you through the short sale process.  A listing agent that does not have experience with short sales can cause delays or even worse, cause the property to “flip”, or fall apart.

A start-up industry has come from the short sale market we are in.  We are seeing companies that specialize with negotiating with lenders, in essence they are working with the lender to organize the short sale package, submit to the lender and hopefully get the lender approval for the short sale.  Sometimes this may be good, sometimes not.  Ask your agent about his/her experience with short sales and this may determine if you need one of these specialty companies.

An eminent domain issue has come up with one of our clients.  Their property is being taken by Eminant Domain.  The city they are in needs their home to widen a street.  The minucipality will offer the homeowners a price for their property and the homeowner will need to relocate.  Usually owners do not like being uprooted and I certainly can underestand why.  Who wants to be forced out of their home.  But in most cases it is for a bigger picture of progress.  Fighting this can be time consuiming and expensive.  Many people are generally needed to petition and fight “cityhall”.  Talk to an attorney before starting this kind of a fight and get an idea of the expense and time involved.

My last topic for the week is one I ecnounter many times.  Lack of communication.  We as Realtors need to help our clients with their real estate issues.  If we do not know or understand the issues we do not know how to get the answer.  I find this problem exists throughout many transactions.  Dont’ be embarrassed by the question or the circumstance, open communication will allow us to do our job and the client to get better service.

Come back next week for statistics and a market update for the month of October 2009.

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