Goldie Sommer - Making Short Sales Work
In order to succeed in short sale work, it requires good negotiating skills and creativity. Goldie Sommer must convince the lender that her client and the bank have a mutual interest in selling this property in short sale. There have been times when she has been able to get relocation or concession fees to her clients, paid by the bank.
Her largest short sale involved a mansion where the outstanding loan balance was $5.5 Million and the sellers were losing the home due to illness and reduction of income. Goldie Sommer successfully negotiated a sales price of $1.25 Million and the lender waived the deficiency balance for the sellers.
Goldie Sommer - Challenges That You Will Experience When Dealing with Foreclosure Properties
Goldie Sommer is an attorney who is an expert on foreclosures and short sales.
A lot of late night TV infomercials and information product creators make buying foreclosure homes look super easy.
In reality, dealing with distressed homeowners has its own challenges. You first need to find people who are behind on their payments, own a home that you want to buy, and would be interested in discussing selling it. Finding people that are behind on their payments is not difficult because oftentimes this information is available to the public for free. Finding those who have a home that you would like to buy is more difficult. Making a good deal with those who own a home that is of interest to you is the most difficult.
Dealing with lenders that are about to foreclose on a loan is yet another aspect you’ll need to become good at if you want to buy a property in foreclosure. The short sale process is a lengthy and complicated matter. It involves getting cooperation from both the seller and the buyer. You must collect financial information, tax returns, bank statements, pay stubs (or unemployment/disability awards), authorizations and other documents before a short sale lender will decide if they will approve the sale. The buyer needs to understand, up front, that patience is the key in as short sale and the sellers must understand that we need their total cooperation in getting us the requested documents. Finally, buying properties in foreclosure may require a lot of cash. If you don’t have enough cash, you’ll need to find lenders willing to fund your investments. You want to find a number of lenders that will offer you reasonable interest rates, as well as look at home equity loans and various lines of credit. You can contact an attorney like Goldie Sommer, who has a lot of experience and connections is the industry and discuss your options with him or her.
Goldie Sommer - Renting Foreclosed Properties Back to Their Owners
After the housing crisis of 2008, Goldie Sommer helped a lot of clients short sell their homes and negotiate foreclosure deals.
When a homeowner with a loan stops making loan payments, the lender usually starts sending letters inquiring about missing and delayed payments. Lenders do not want to foreclose on loans and end up with real estate properties. For a profitable bank, a foreclosure is usually an expensive and unwanted distraction from doing what the bank does best, which is lending and managing money.
Many first mortgages come with insurance policies from the Federal Housing Administration, Veterans Administration, or Mortgage Guarantee Insurance Corporation. When a mortgage has insurance, the risk for lenders is lower and negotiating with a lender in such a scenario may be harder. Second mortgages rarely come with insurance policies, which is why second mortgage lenders are usually more likely to negotiate and accept a partial payment on a defaulted loan.
One of the strategies that foreclosure real estate investors use is buying homes in foreclosure and renting them back to the owners. If you decide to use this strategy, there are two things you absolutely need to know. First, make sure that the sellers understand that they are actually selling their home. They are not moving, so some of them may be thinking that they are refinancing their current loan. The documents need to clearly state that the transaction is a sale and not a loan. A rental agreement should be contained in a separate document.
Second, find out why and how the owners plan to honor the lease. What makes you think that they will be able to afford rent payments when they were not able to pay their loan payments? Has their income increased? Did their expenses decrease? Are these increases or decreases permanent? Contact an experienced attorney like Goldie Sommer to get a second opinion and evaluate your options if you need help.
Goldie Sommer - Analyzing the Performance of Different Types of Real Estate from the Investment Perspective
Goldie Sommer has been in the real estate industry for a long time, which gave her a unique perspective on the real estate market. Different types of real estate perform differently as investments. Commercial real estate can experience large changes in value as the economy changes. An empty medical office building or a warehouse can sell for a small fraction of what it cost to build.
A well-located single-family home will typically appreciate faster than the average property on the market. It will also not go through significant drops in value that usually happen with commercial properties during slow economy periods. However, not all the residential properties perform in the same manner. Higher-priced luxury homes may have bigger price increases in the prosperous economy compared to lower-priced homes, but they can drop in price significantly when the economy slows down, while lower-priced homes very rarely drop in price. The reason is that the land also costs money and its costs are constantly going up. A home may not be worth much, but the land under it increases in price all the time.
One of the big advantages in acquiring several single-family homes rather than one apartment building is that you can diversify your investment by buying homes of different sizes and different price ranges. By owning lower-priced houses and luxury homes simultaneously, you can minimize your risks with lower-priced homes and take advantage of the upside potential of your luxury properties.
You should treat all the news about real estate that you read in the newspapers and online with healthy skepticism. Most headlines are designed to attract attention and sell more newspapers. There is no national real estate market or a trend. Different housing markets will always behave differently, which is something you will see if you spend as much time in the real estate industry as Goldie Sommer did.
