SDR, I never stated that property taxes owing were at issue here. A CA County assessor doesn’t NEED to place a “lien” on property for back taxes. They can just auction the property off after five years of unpaid taxes! It is easy for a buyer’s agent to find out if there’s any past-due property taxes owing.
You “got it” when you stated:
[quote=SD Realtor] . . . Once more, the majority of them indeed do have conversations with the sellers. What tends to happen more is that sellers don’t tell the listing agent all of the information that is needed. They either minimize it, or gloss over it, and then when a pr is run and you show it to them and ask what this or that lien is about they may magically remember. . . . [/quote]
You just mirrored what I was discussing here.
This “end run” after buyers have already committed to the transaction in the form of appraisal/inspection fees and lost time is what will need to be prevented from the get go to “Holmes-proof” yourself in the future, SDR!
Accepting a “deadbeat seller’s” statements at face-value and entering bona-fide buyers into a transaction that will never go thru according to the terms of the accepted offer will now be a recipe for seller (and broker) liability in CA. And rightly it should.
If a sellers name was uncommon, you may not need a former spouse’s name. But if your seller’s name is common, you may need it only to discern his/her county records from another individual with the same name when you do your preliminary due diligence as a listing agent.
SDR, you know better than anyone that a seller can be 30 or more months behind in mortgage payments without an NOD ever being filed! How is this NOT a material fact for potential buyers to know? How is a “pr” going to disclose this “material fact?” Answer this, SDR. How many days have typically elapsed in escrow before a lender demand is sent for by an escrow officer? Could it possibly be past the “17-day” right of the buyer to cancel the transaction, no questions asked? More importantly, how much time and money have the buyers wasted on this transaction that will never go thru in accordance with their purchase contract??
If you, as a listing agent, don’t know what your sellers REAL story is and enter into a contract to sell to buyers under certain terms at a certain price, how are your clients ever going to be able to fulfill their terms of the contract??
To “Holmes-proof themselves, sellers selling “short” (whether their “distress” is of public record or not) and their agents/brokers will now have to make their “problems of record” or “potential problems of record” a potential buyer’s business now. It’s either that or get foreclosed upon.
How will you you know if your potential sellers:
-owe far more than what the face of their outstanding trust deed(s) of record indicate, due to late fees and other charges?
-recently lost a civil case and are soon to have an abstract filed against them?
-have been in a running feud with the IRS/FTB and the agency is about to file liens (or they are already filed)?
-have a DCSS lien for back child support to an agency or ex spouse for children who are now 27 and 33?
-have abstracts of judgment on file for domestic judgments, collection judgments, civil judgments, etc?
-are behind in HOA dues by six months and the HO Assn is about to file a lien (or already has)?
The “cavalier” attitude of listing agents putting a lien in front of their sellers 10, 15, 20 or 25 days AFTER opening escrow to help them “magically remember” are OVER, thanks to Holmes.
Do you NOT think any or all of the above happen to your “short-sale sellers?” The truth is, they happen every day. If your potential seller needs to sell short, DIG DEEPER! Like it or not, that will be your duty as a “short-sale” listing agent. However you have to start that pre-listing “CTJ” convo, you need to find out if there is anything you (and more importantly, a potential buyer should know prior to drafting their offer to purchase).
A short sale is not about buyers coming in to “save the day” and cure all the sellers’ problems after they have already agreed to price and terms. It’s about a mutually beneficial arrangement, that is, the sellers keeping a foreclosure off their credit report, obtaining immunity from any recourse notes they signed and the buyers getting a presumably better than average deal on a property.
Otherwise, why not just let the property go to foreclosure, if the sellers aren’t going to come out with a higher FICO score and get releases on jr recourse paper at the end of a “successful” short sale? Isn’t that the real purpose of a “short sale,” (aside from the agents/brokers earning a commission)??
