Working with Short Sale Buyers – Educate and Disclose

by Matthew Rathbun on February 3, 2010

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Pitfalls

There are a number of issues that face homebuyers in today’s market.   In our area a large number of listings are Short Sales.  These transactions pose a potential risk management issue for Brokers and Agents.  More over they can actually discourage a buyer or cause them to loose a good opportunity while messing with a Short Sale.

Tools that Educate

I’ve created two tools that I use for my clients.  The first is a short video talking about buying a Short Sale in Virginia and the other  is a buyer agency policy, specific for Short Sales. 

The addendum to our existing buyer-agency policy is below.  This document would be reviewed with the buyer during the buyer-interview process to help gauge how they would like to proceed.

 

I think that agents who properly prepare their clients for transaction set a very professional tone for the entire transaction and also set themselves up for a smoother relationship with their clients. 

For the Agents

For Virginia agents looking for a reference on things that affect us as agents, the following guide was created by several associations to help setup some guidelines and answer commonly asked questions by Realtors.

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Wallet-Wise Marketing for Realtors

by Matthew Rathbun on January 31, 2010

You may be a new agent starting out and need some ideas of budget friendly marketing or an experienced agent looking for new opportunities. Either way we could all use a reminder of some ideas on how to find and engage new clients. This presentation is the basis for conversations in a wallet-wise (formally called “Low Budget Marketing”) class. The students always seem to add a great list of ideas by the end of this 90 minute session.

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GadgetTrak Helps Find Your Stolen Stuff!

by Matthew Rathbun

I admit it… I’m paranoid about my Mac or Blackberry being swiped by some nefarious gadget-grabber.  Today while searching for insurance options for my Mac, I found GadgetTrak.com.  For $25 a year it will embed software on your PC, Mac, iPhone or Blackberry that can later be triggered if the item is stolen.  Sound like [...]

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FHA’s New Policy Changes 2010 Edition

by Matthew Rathbun

I received a notice from a loan officer today, giving an update on the new FHA changes.  The Policies are an attempt to make FHA more stable in this economy.  Evidentially, the FHA is running out of money.  As with many of the Government’s fiscal policies there seems to be these significant changes once they [...]

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2010 NAR Changes to the Code of Ethics

by Matthew Rathbun

This was a fairly easy year for the ever-evolving Realtor Code of Ethics.  Just a few tweaks as you’ll find below.
You’ll find a higher emphasis on online communications and how to handle content that is misleading or untruthful.  You’ll also find an expansion on the violation re-transmitting untruthful or misleading information about fellow Realtors.  Here [...]

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Wordpress: Are You Seeing All Your RSS Stats?

by Matthew Rathbun

While looking at my visitor information on Google Analytics, I realized that the number of visitors was way up, but in contrast to Feedburner numbers it didn’t appear that the number of subscribers was increasing at the same rate.
What I realized is that visitors were still subscribing, but were not necessarily using the RSS Subscription [...]

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