When the owner can't afford to keep paying the mortgage there is a the possibility of a short sale. The home will be sold at a much smaller price. This is not the ideal way to make a sale but it's an alternative to bankruptcy.

If a person accepts a short sale that means that he is agreeing to receive less than the total amount due. It's important to know that not all sellers qualify for a short sale. The lawyer can help you figure out if you can have a short sale or not.

Before deciding to purchase a short sale you should obtain first legal advice from a real estate lawyer. Also is important to discuss with your accountant the tax ramifications. It's possible that all the debts forgiveness will be considered as income.

The first step is to submit a letter of authorization which must include the property address, the loan reference number, your agent's name and contact information. If you do this you will receive better cooperation from the closing agent or the lawyer.

Your lawyer or agent should prepare a preliminary net sheet. This will show the sales price and all the costs of the sale. If you find it impossible to calculate all these fees they will be able to make a clear list for you. If you don't understand anything feel free to ask. Read more

Have you ever wondered where to invest money that you have accumulated throughout your lifetime? If you have, then you are not alone. Today, thousands or even tens of thousands of individuals situated in the United States and all over the world are wondering the same. It is very difficult to make this decision since there are now numerous ways and means in investing ones money. There are so many businesses out there where you can invest your money. The most popular among these investing procedures is "stock investing".

Stock investing mainly focuses on the trading of stocks in the stock market. Trading stocks involves both the buying and selling of stocks. In order to gain the highest possible profit, stocks are bought at the cheapest or lowest price attainable. The investor will then wait for the right time when these stocks will be at the highest or most expensive price before actually selling it. The key in order to be able to buy at the cheapest and sell at the most expensive is to know the "fluctuation" of the prices. These fluctuations can be predicted by using the tried and tested stock market formulas that have been widely used since the last five decades.

The stock market must be taken into account as a whole. Therefore, a suitable and complete market analysis must be conducted in order to have adequate data and information of the stock market as a whole. This can be done with the aid of numerous stocks trading software widely that is widely available in the market as of today. All of the necessary computations together with the charts and tables that are needed in order to predict the market trend and the much anticipated "fluctuation" will be done by this kind of software. Time, effort and energy are thus saved whilst having accurate data and information at the same time.

So, you are looking for a house and you fell in love with a home that is offered as a short sale. What does that mean for you? What is a short sale and what is the difference between a short sale and a foreclosure?

To sum it up, a foreclosure happens when mortgage payments are not made and the banks takes over the home. The bank takes over not only the home, but also the title to the home and evicts the person who used to be buying the house. For this reason foreclosed homes are usually empty.

A short sale happens before a forclosure. Its when the home owner has fallen behind on their payments or they can see it coming in the near future, and they think that if only they could sell the house, not only would they be saved from a total foreclosure, but they may end up with some money in their pocket also. So they list the home and it doesn't sell. So they lower the price, again and again, until finally, they can't lower it anymore and pay all of the realtor commissions, closing fees, and the bank. So someone needs to start cutting their pay. Realtors aren't in the business of working for free, so they may give a little and the bank ends up giving the most. Since the bank will be taking a loss, they now get involved with negotiating the deal. In fact, they can really stick their nose in things now.

When you submit an offer on a short sale, it goes straight to the bank and they decide whether they will accept it or not. This can take up to four months of your offer sitting on a desk, thousands of miles away. Unfortunately, its out of everybody's hands at this point. The seller can't do anything, neither can the realtors, the lender or you, the buyer.

At this point you are just waiting to find out whether you even have an offer or not. Sometimes the bank is considering multiple offers, which makes the game even more confusing for the buyers.

What kind of deal are you going to get? Will it be pennies on the dollar? Probably not. The bank has a good idea of what the home will appraise for, and they don't want to loose any more money than they have to. So the probability of them lowering their payoff, while giving you the equity, is pretty slim. Read More

So much about building wealth in real estate today assumes you wish to make a quick profit. Buy low, improve the property, put it on the market right away, sell it and make a quick profit. While that sounds good, things may not go the way you planned and you could end up losing money.

The reason for that is because real estate is really not designed for get rich quick schemes. It's a long term investment. Those who look at it that way usually outperform those that don't. Just look at how many have lost their fortunes during this recent real estate market downturn!

Instead, I'd like to offer an alternative based upon many people I've met growing up. These people didn't have super-high paying jobs. Most didn't have college educations. Most of these people had blue-collar jobs, carpenters, painters, etc. Yet all of them retired quite wealthy and with plenty of money. They did much better than those who pursued what was considered to be the conventional way to wealth.

Here's how they did it: They would buy a house that needed work and was priced below-market. They would move in and do repairs over a period of about 5-10 years. By this time they paid off the house in full. Since they didn't earn a substantial salary, that means they were very disciplined and took any extra money they had and used it to pay down the mortgage. They disliked interest because interest on money borrowed didn't help them build equity in the property. Once the property was paid off and fixed up, it was now ready for a tenant who would gladly pay top market rent for such a nicely updated property.

Next they would buy another property and do it all over again. By the time they retired, they owned five to ten free and clear units. Imagine if you took today's rental value and multiplied it by five or ten. You can see that this method provides plenty of income. And here's the best part: Rental income grows with inflation. This ends that problem I see so often with retirees: When they retire, their retirement income is abundant. But just five years down the road it no longer is enough forcing the retiree to seek other sources of income. Not so if you follow the plan I've just described. Obviously, you set aside some of the rental income in a fund to continually take care of the property when repairs are needed.

But here's the little known benefit to the get rich slow plan: When the real estate market gets slow, or if a tenant cannot pay the rent, because the property is owned free and clear it's not a huge financial drain. Investors who use this plan do great in either fast or slow real estate markets and very seldom see a collapse of their real estate holdings as is so common with the get rich quick folks.

If times really get tough, you can either borrow against the equity in the property or sell it outright. And because the property is owned free and clear, there are selling options not available to those who have to pay off a loan. For example you may be able to carry the financing for the buyer. That one option alone can open the door to more potential home buyers leading to a higher sales price.

It's rare, however to see the get rich slow people ever sell their properties, though. That's because whenever you sell, you trigger tax consequences. If you buy but never sell, taxation on your sales profits won't be an issue. Read more