If you answered the above questions by saying “A long sale” you are wrong. A short sale IS a long sale! (Of course, we are talking about real estate, not stocks and bonds.) When I say long, I mean as in a long time…months, in fact.

Some time back, I told my wife that I was writing an offer for a client on a short sale. “Great”, she said. “That means that you will get paid more quickly!” Wrong! She thought short sale meant quick sale. In fact, I wrote a blog about that experience.

After three months, the listing agent told me that the lender would accept my buyer’s offer. Problem was that the market had been declining, and was showing no signs of halting its decline, and my buyer was not willing to honor a three-month-old price. The lender would not accept my buyer’s revised offer. Bad move by the lender. The property stayed on the market for another three months and finally sold for the amount of my buyer’s revised offer.

That was then and this is now…and nothing has really changed in the real estate short sale world. Our local paper, The Argus, carried an article today about short sales. It is a good primer for someone to whom short sales are a new concept.

My experience with short sales is that each is different. New rules are being written and new procedures are being created to deal with the economic realities of sellers who cannot sell their houses in a normal manner because the value of the property is less than what is owed against it. The capability and experience of the agents representing either the seller or buyer greatly influences the outcome of the transaction. The patience of the buyer, who will not know if their offer is accepted for weeks or months, often runs out. Buyers often find alternative properties before the receive acceptance of their short sale offer.

Short sale…part of the new world of real estate.