Nate Berg is a Brooklyn Park MN real estate agent that knows how to find a silver lining in a dark cloud. It’s no secret that the Brooklyn Park MN real estate market is soft and is flooded with lender mediated properties, including short sales/pre-foreclosure and bank owned (REO) properties. With an economy that seems to be getting worse every day, many Brooklyn Park MN homeowners are defaulting on their mortgages and need help.
There is an old adage that says “every crisis is an opportunity.” By becoming a proficient short-sales expert, Nate’s sales production is not experiencing a slump that most other Brooklyn Park MN real estate agents are experiencing. Of course, this means much more work for Nate, but Nate has discovered that he enjoys helping people who are experiencing a mortgage crisis. He also discovered that the crisis provides a viable market niche for himself.
Nate is experienced with the difficult and time-consuming task of negotiating offers with lenders. He knows how to work with the red tape and stubborn out-out-of-state lenders. Nate is not an attorney, so he cannot give legal advice. However, he does present realistic options to people who are facing foreclosure or who need help with a short sale.
Is Nate an opportunist? Hardly. Nate does not buy pre-foreclosure homes and he makes it clear to his clients that he is not an investor. In Brooklyn Park, as elsewhere, there are plenty of shysters who claim that they will “save the house.” A common ruse is to offer to purchase the home and then rent it back to the home owners. Frequently, there is some trick clause that makes rental untenable, i.e. the new owner needs to escrow a year of rent, there are hidden costs, etc, so the victim sells the house only to face eviction a month or two later. For folks who are in these situations, an honest professional like Nate is a welcome site. Nate’s goal is to ensure that the home owners have enough solid information so they can make the best decisions for themselves.
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Nate: I don’t pretend to be anything close to an expert on short sales, but in the Bethesda, Maryland area real estate market (where we do most of our business) it appears to be extremely difficult to have a successful outcome with the banks. Although I have never listed a short sale, we have had two clients write on them and in both cases our clients ended up giving up after many weeks of no response…and, in one of those cases, I know that we were dealing with a very strong and experienced listing agent. What proportion of short sales are you getting through? When you work with a seller, are you “pre- negotiating” with the bank? As you work with buyers, are there red flags from listing agents (on short sales) that immediately warn you that it’s not worth your time? Congratulations on making this market work for you.
The increase in contracts, and in showings and open houses, carried through to the first week of January However, sales were on a downward trend through November 2008, according to the latest information from First American CoreLogic, a provider of real estate and property data.
Sales of single-family homes dropped nearly 37 percent in Loveland and Fort Collins in November compared with the same period last year, according to CoreLogic. Nationally, sales were down 36 percent.
People are concerned that what’s going on in the residential market applies to the commercial market. Buyers and tenants are waiting out the economic conditions we’re in right now.”
Regards,
Michael McLaughlin, Cary real estate
I have a client from Canada that has invested in the area and is waiting “til the time is right” (6 – 12 months he tells me). This is interesting, I will be sure to take note. Good thread.
Gtrechen,
I am having about a 85% success rate with all my short sales. I have gotten to the point where I can actually choose who I want to work with. The more lenders the property has the harder the deal becomes. I never charge upfront money and often times the bank will pay for my services. I charge $1000-1500 per short sale, if closed. If the bank does not pay me at least that in comissions my broker has allowed me to bill for the balance of my services at closing. Obviously this can be adjusted case by case for those who really cannot pay anything.
I always pre-negotiate all short sales before they even hit the market. I do this through a netwrok of investors that I choose to work with. They write offers initially and get a good deal if they go through, otherwise they hit the market and we usually get them sold quickly.
Nate Bergs last blog post..Short Sales in Minnesota
I know it’s hard to be positive these days, but with his ability to see the silver lining and hiden opportunities it sounds like Nate has the right attitude and other people need to follow his example!
Keep up the good work Nate. I predominantly work with buyers so I wish there were more listing agents in our area that knew what they were doing with the shorts. It would make life much easier on my end.
Staying positive is good! No matter how bad stuff seems, there is always a silver lining somewhere in the cloud if you look hard enough. In my industry at least, I’m finding that hard work is still paying off quite well, even in this financial downturn.
Yeah keep up the great work. 85% closing rate is really good. I also like the idea of preselling them before they hit the market.
Keep up the great attitude. A positive outlook does wonders for yourself and those around you.
Easter has blossomed with exchanges accelerating into double figures over the last two weeks.
A lot of bargains are still available in the UK pub and licensed property market. The UK breweries and pub companies are overleveraged from buying sprees when things were better. As the credit crunch bites and the banks want thier mortgage re payments the owners have to find the cash from somewhere
Many of these pubs are coming up for sale, are freehold and occupy prime town and city centre locations with spacious yards, car parks, beer gardens and out buildings. These pubs offer excellent change of use and property redevelopment or refurbishment opportunities, subject to planning permission and developers are picking up investment properties for a song as pub sales prices hit rock bottom .
This is upbeat and, more importantly, true
UK pub sales agentss last blog post..Pubs for sale in the Midlands and East Anglia
There are currently 401 resale and new homes in Brooklyn Park on Trulia, including 8 open houses, as well as 343 homes in the pre-foreclosure, auction, or bank-owned stages of the foreclosure process. The average listing price for homes for sale in Brooklyn Park MN was $195,475 for the week ending May 06, which was unchanged compared to the prior week.
Cheers, Samuel(The guy Searching for Panama property)
I do agree with you that during this time of economy crisis many Brooklyn Park MN homeowners are defaulting on their mortgages and need help. According to 2000 numbers, 24, 400 households span the real estate of Brooklyn Park. Buying real estate, especially in the recent housing market, can be tricky business. Foreclosures have become more prevalent in today’s market because buyers aren’t relying on agents to dot the t’s and dot the lower-case j’s.
Regards,
Alex,
Panama property.
Brooklyn Park’s closed sales transactions have jumped 56% YTD through April compared to the same period in 2008. These kinds of sales jumps are similar to what we’re seeing in California and Florida where home prices are down 40-50% but sales activity is up 50-70%.
Regards,
Alex,
Panama property.
Right. Keep being positive and this could improve your work. A good advice for anyone.
The San Diego real estate market is so tight on inventory right now that prospective buyers are again lining up at the front door of every reasonably-priced home that comes on the market. In San Diego, this means any house priced under $500,000. Almost three quarters of the houses for sale in most San Diego neighbhorhoods are short sales or foreclosures. So the foreclosure REO listing agents are having their extended 15 minutes of fame, giving lousy service to clients, treating other Realtors poorly, and in the worst cases acting unethically. I’m glad that you’re finding a niche in distress sales. But please do a good job, and don’t let it go to your head!
Ok I know that there is still tons of bad news out there and plenty of reasons to believe it but here are a few things that MIGHT indicate that the real estate market is starting to firm up in Phoenix.
1. A mortgage lender friend of mine says that April will be his best month since 2005.
2. I wrote purchase contracts on two different properties today and received offers on two different listings this weekend. This constitutes the busiest weekend I have had in four years. One of the offers I received was for full price.
3. My wife, an escrow officer, says that April will be her busiest month since 2005. About 50% of the transactions are refinancing of existing mortgages and 50% purchase contracts. Yes, most of the contracts are of lower priced foreclosures but its still promising to see that so many people believe prices now “make sense”.
4. We have received more buyer leads over the last two weeks than we have in four years.
5. We are finding properties priced low enough that one can easily enjoy positive cash flow if they buy and then rent the property out.
I’m not saying that we can now declare that the bust is over and full steam ahead but if things keep going in this direction we very well may be seeing the beginning of a recovery.
Make sure to send in complete packages to the bank to get them to respond to you.
I sold my house as a short sale with the help of a real estate agent. It only happened because of my involvement in the process. I’m the seller. I called the mortgage company at least ten times, talking for sometimes an hour at a time trying to force them to process the paperwork. Many times I had to resend the documents, certified mail. I was always respectful, but forceful.
It is no wonder our financial companies are in the pickle they are in after you deal with lost paperwork, wrong advice and incompetent customer service reps.
Get you seller involved because they can accomplish steps with the finance company when you can’t.
Your county government web site lets youfind foreclosures for free.
.-= Susan Boehm´s last blog ..Is the FDIC Killing Short SalesS =-.
This is a great time to buy a home if you can afford it. The market is starting to right it self and houses will start to go up in price. Now is the time to buy.
This world needs more honest professionals handling short sales like us Nate. It’s unfortunate that there are so many. Here in Atlanta there are thousands of foreclosures every month that could have been a short sale. So, it’s an opportunity to help and be compensated for it. Keep up the good work and best of luck to you.