Buyers confused about asking prices on short sales

Editor,

I took part in your short survey on how Florida Realtors feel about short sales, but what I would like to know is how other Realtors feel about the advertising of short sales in the MLS. As far as I’m concerned, the asking prices are meaningless. Most of the time, sellers and agents don’t know if the bank will even approve the short sale; and if they will, they have no idea what price the bank will accept. You end up with a whole lot of misinformed buyers who think that if this is the asking price on Realtor.com, then that must be what they can get the home for.

I feel that it is a great disservice to all the responsible home sellers out there who have not over-mortgaged their properties and have them priced to sell. What needs to go in the ‘price’ field is “we really have no idea how much the lender will take for this house and we probably won’t be able to tell you for 3-6 months after you submit an offer.”

These short-sales are destroying the credibility of our MLS, and I don’t feel they should be allowed on there without some sort of guidelines as to where this “price” is coming from – for example, letting potential buyers know how many liens are on the home and what the actual payoff is on each. Then our buyers could make more educated decisions.

Kiki Turner
Century 21 Armstrong Team Realty
Deltona

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