I hope you are all having a wonderful week!
This is a must share as it weighs heavy on my heart, because Kris and I have experienced a Foreclosure and let me say it was a devastating time in our life. We have fully recovered from that time and now truly thank God we are not buried in the debt we tried so desperately to hold onto…the four walls we called our home!
Some of you may know that Kris and I are not only practicing licensed real estate agents, we are also coaches and trainers for Brokers and Agents across the United States. So the story I’m sharing with you today comes from an agent that will remain “nameless”….
The day here started off pretty status quo for us, but then a call from an agent we work with as a coaching student jolted us into a spiraling tizzy of OMGoodness…is this still happening?
“Nameless” was telling us about a client she was working with. This client was upside down in their home. This means the owner owes more than the home can be sold. The call between “nameless” proceeded and as we discussed the situation we learned that “nameless” had suggested to her client to just “walk away” from the home and try to get into another home with a lease option.
Well, first things first….What??? We set “nameless” on the correct path of helping her client with a Short Sale to avoid a Foreclosure, the most devastating credit hit.
Please, if you are in a situation where your home is not worth as much as you owe on it, do not just close up the door behind you and run away from it.
It appears there are licensed real estate agents giving out some “not so great” advice in our current housing market.
A foreclosure has so many negative ramifications, the better solution to a foreclosure is a Short Sale. You will want to find an agent that has experience with Short Sales, they are not easy and do take a trained real estate agent. There are many reasons a Short Sale is more desirable than a Foreclosure to you if you are ready to shed yourself from overwhelming debt. Your lender may give you cash to relocate at the close of your Short Sale, you also will be able to purchase a home sooner because the Foreclosure is much harder on your credit.
I can personally share with you that we lost our home to Foreclosure back when the market just started to crash in 2007. The banks were not keen on Short Sales, we kept trying to make it work but eventually ran out of money once we depleted all of our savings. Our Merry Christmas was a foreclosure notice. I truly believe had we been granted a Short Sale and had the opportunity to work through that, instead of the gut wrenching feeling of losing our home to Foreclosure, we would have let go much sooner…hence recovered much sooner.
