Real estate poll results: Foreclosures and short sales
Fifty-eight percent of you are either interested in buying a short sale or foreclosure, or you're in the process of doing so. At least that's what you said in the most recent Wonk poll.
That doesn't sound like great news for traditional home sellers. But of course there's a difference between trying to buy and actually settling -- more on that in a moment.
Here's the poll-result breakdown:
Forty percent of you say you'd like to buy a foreclosure or short sale (in which a buyer sells for less than the mortgage balance and the lender eats the difference) as a primary residence. An additional six percent would like to buy one or the other as an investment.
Twelve percent of you say you're in the process of buying a foreclosure or short sale, in all cases but one as a primary residence.
Ten percent of you own a home you bought as a foreclosure or short sale.
Six percent of you are trying to sell via short sale.
And 20 percent of you aren't interested in buying a foreclosure or short sale, which includes one write-in answer from a formerly interested buyer: "tired of slow banks and want to buy a traditional sale." (The other write-in answers: "waiting for the bottom in LA," "willing to buy a home I like at late 1990's prices" -- hi, Darwin Rules! -- and "I can't afford to buy a house.")
BigDragon, who had a contract on a short sale, said in a comment that he got sick of waiting. "After 4 and a half months of silence from the seller's bank I gave up and chased after a new construction townhouse. I've been looking for a place of my own all year long. As a first time home buyer I honestly expected this process to be over in a month or two and not the year it's almost taken. ... It's nice to be able to see real progress from the builder."
Terp05 played the short-sale waiting game too and ended up with the house -- six months after putting in a contract:
The process was painful and too often unexplainable. We received approval in mid March, only to find out the seller filed for bankruptcy a week earlier. This required an extra 2.5 months for the home to be released from the bankruptcy court since it could not be considered an asset (and to prevent the trustee from taking ownership). After release, we had to wait for another approval by the same bank (for the same offer) which took quite some time. The overall feeling I received from the seller's bank was that they had no interest in taking the property off of the books and needed constant prodding to keep the file from disappearing on someone's desk under a pile of (proverbial) paper.While my patience and persistence paid off in the end, the process definitely took a toll on my mental well-being. The last month or so became agonizing- checking my email almost hourly for updates that didn't come or were of little substance. Also, that "great short sale deal" I thought I was getting didn't look quite as lucrative when prices in my county fell ~17% in the time I was waiting to go to settlement. Fortunately I think I still did well looking at comps in my neighborhood and recent appraisals.
Even though I've made it sound bad, in the end I found the home with the features I was looking for and some perks that I wouldn't have been able to afford otherwise. I got a great interest rate (locked before the run-up in late May) and the first time home buyer credit on my 2008 taxes.
Anyone with a foreclosure-buying story to share? Easier than short sales? Harder?
And for you homeowners trying to sell short, what does the process look like from your end?
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