Short sales are not easy. And what is even more difficult is asking sellers to maintain and upkeep a home they already owe too much on.
From a seller standpoint I can truly understand it is like throwing good money out to bad. But the goal is to keep the property at its optimal level so you can get the optimal price for the home when it sells.
It is hard even wanting to encourage sellers to keep the yard mowed, do interior enhancements, keep the utilities running, and a lot of other things when they know owe too much on the home to get anything out of it anyways.
Wouldn't it be nice if lenders would say hey Homeowner, we are the only ones who are going to get any money out of this deal. When we mutually agreed to do the short sale we more than likely agreed you wouldn't reap anything. We'll send someone to keep the property up prior to it going into foreclosure. It is in our best interests anyways because the more money the property draws the more money we as The Bank get to keep.
As long as the homeowner still owns the property and it has not gone into foreclosure chances are the bank is going to get more money. The prospective buyers are just impressed the home shows well. They don't know the bank forked up the money prior to foreclosure. Why not send the maintenance and lawn care people out ahead of time prior to foreclosing and spruce up the property and maintain it rather than waiting for it to go into foreclosure and losing thousands.
As part of the short sale approval Banker, go ahead and approve a maintenance and lawn care amount especially for the properties which are already vacant. This is just a suggestion to reap you some additional revenues. The banks normally have the money to put out that the owners in the short sale situation just most often don't have or don't have the motivation to do because they are not getting a check at the end in most cases anyways.
