Real Estate Agents Can Be Indispensable if Facing Foreclosure or Short Sale
The major difficulty in doing a short sale is that you must get a solid offer from a potential buyer before your lender will tell you whether or not it will accept the terms. A short sale is not foreclosure; a short sale is the sale of a house threatened with foreclosure. It's a sale made with the lender's agreement so that the homeowners can get out from under their mortgage by selling the house even if the sale of the house will not pay off the entire remaining loan amount.
A local real estate agent who is familiar with the practices of particular lenders will have a good idea of what kind of terms the lenders will accept. The agent will also negotiate with your lender for the final terms of the offer to purchase. Getting a short sale to closing can require experience with the lender (or lenders) and experience in negotiating real estate deals.
Since real estate agents are finding that more of the transactions they are involved with are short sales, they are taking advantage of additional training in dealing with short sales and foreclosures. The training of the agent is important to you whether you are the buyer or seller.
~Barb