When Negotiating a Short Sale, This is What Rapport Does for You!



“I saw your name on the coversheet, and great, I love working with these guys!”  Those were some of the first words that the new negotiator at GMAC said upon his phone call informing me he was now handling this file.  And that was when I knew that this deal was going to happen, it was going to close.

The deal in question involved two mortgages, a tremendous amount of debt, and a fair market value that had dropped from over $400K down to the mid $200K’s.  Both mortgages were staring at a big loss and the buyer’s were NOT coming in droves.   Because of the high BPO, the deal quickly had to be converted from a big spread “wholesale short sale” to a fee based “retail short sale”.  We then had to not only quickly find an end buyer willing to pay 85% of the BPO, but we also had to find a buyer that was willing to pay us a loss mitigation fee inclusive of their offer.

There’s a little background, now down to the details.  As I said, the property had two mortgages.  The 1st mortgage was only allowing $1000 to the 2nd mortgage and the 2nd mortgage wouldn’t cooperate unless they got $6000 at closing.  So the first challenge was to meet that requirement.  By working with the offer price and the buyer’s agent, I was able to get the buyer first to agree to pay the difference, by us negotiating seller’s concessions for the buyer (which he had not requested in his initial offer.  The next step was to get the 1st mortgage on board.  At first they only agreed to pay half the concessions that the buyer would need to pay the 2nd mortgage, but I continued to push and got an approval for the full amount, and in turn the written approval letter from them.

I then proceeded to attack the 2nd mortgage. Now that I could depend on the sum they required at closing (which, incidentally, they had already approved on a prior offer), I was not only able to sell them on the fact that the 1st mortgage and the buyer were on board to pay them, but also to remind them that they had already approved the amount I was proposing.  And now for the icing on the cake – the negotiator at the 2nd mortgage was a rep that I had dealt with on a prior short sale and built a level of trust and rapport with.  So after the property closed he told me that the only reason he did a deal this creative was because he was dealing with me and my company and that it was a pleasure working with us!

The BIG Take – Away

Always, always be professional and courteous when dealing with any and all negotiators that you face.  You never know when you’ll see them again and they’ll be in the position to either make or break a deal for you.  Make sure they have an overwhelming desire to make the deal for you!