There are a lot of Realtors that don’t comprehend the whole idea of working with short sale investors. Here is my argument for short sale flips: 

By keeping a home on the market that is delinquent and not having the short sale process begin is just as bad as low-balling the price. You see, when the home owner doesn’t pay the mortgage they not only rack up a deficiency but they also compound legal fees and late payment fees. With our approach the property automatically goes into short sale, negating all those excess fees and delinquency and putting the home owner in the best possible position with regards to evading foreclosure, which is the absolute goal. 

And we as Realtors don’t control anything regarding pricing during a short sale anyway; the bank is the one who sets the price they’ll take for a property, not we Realtors. So, why not find out what that price is ahead of time by having a team of professional loss mitigators and investors do all the negotiation work and then price the short sale property to sell quickly in the MLS for a price we know the bank will accept? Another benefit to this program is that the buyer is not forced to wait and wait and wait for short sale approval because we have pre-negotiated the price with the bank. Meaning that you won’t lose buyer’s because they’re tired of waiting for ‘bank approval’.

Furthermore, usually there is no delinquency (this depends completely on the home owner and is never promised nor guaranteed), and if the home owner is insolvent then there won’t be any tax to worry about either. But if the property NEVER sells and the home owner gets foreclosed then the home owner will owe the whole mortgage amount minus whatever they got on the steps of the court house, not just the tax or the deficiency. When home owners run out of options this program is about the best thing for them.

And what’s wrong with making money as a real estate investor, eh? That’s called Capitalism. Don’t you own investment properties? Didn’t you want to get those investment properties for as cheap as possible? Haven’t you low-balled offers for clients before? Didn’t the people on the other side of the transaction take a bath? So what’s the difference? If the property becomes an REO because you can’t short sell it then the same outcome occurs, doesn’t it? So why not prevent REO’s, buoy the market-place, and make a little money at the same time?

The morality issue should be to help the home owner avoid foreclosure, if that’s what they came to you for. And that is what our program is all about. We as Realtors are not White Knights and we shouldn’t claim to be; we are business people providing services for our clients. If a client needs to avoid foreclosure by short selling their property - and they’ve tried a loan mod and a deed in lieu to no avail - then the moral thing is to do whatever you can to stop foreclosure for that client. This is what this program is all about.