August 2006
Chapter/Distress Years Require Systems to HELP Homeowners
Short Sales ~ Foreclosures ~ REO
Okay, so it’s August, 2006 we have a new baby on the way.
We have a house brand new house being built in the newest phase of Morrison ranch I’ve put in all of the upgrades actually we had already moved in, had when we had already moved into this house we moved between Christmas of 2005 and New Year’s of 2006. And I was pregnant, expecting our second child, and spring came along, 2006, and the business in the market, didn’t pick up like it normally did around spring break. And I thought, that’s kind of strange.
This would have been spring break of yep 2007 actually I take that back. We moved between Christmas and New Year’s 2006 spring break we had hotter, hotter child in fall of 2006.
Then we moved between spring in or sorry between Christmas and New Year’s. And then, spring break of 2007 was silent. Super silent, and for Morrison ranch. When you are the number one listing agent and person marketing the area, when things go silent. You notice immediately. I am noticed immediately because before that I could put a listing coming soon sign in a yard and have people calling me off of it as I was prepping the house to go on the market. And sometimes, sell it to a buyer, without having to put it into the MLS. And, you know, co broke it with another agent. Of course I always did that with agreement and disclosure between all parties, that’s a different story, a different conversation,
But that market always moved really super fast.
So when spring break came around, and it was quiet. I knew how to adjust I had been through market adjustments. But I knew something was wrong. And I also knew that we had just bought what was to be our dream home, took all the money out of the house in Higley groves, put it in Highland groves. And it’s silent.
So, I started doing everything I could up marketing and change different things and move forward in different ways. And it just continue like it was quiet and quiet and quiet and I realized my homeowners. Were losing value, and before I knew it, we were making price adjustments and prices were coming down a little bit. And then we got to the point where we were just literally chasing prices down like if a property dropped five grand. I knew instantly because I set my sellers up on the same email drips, that would be. Here’s their house for 1500, square feet. I would run a search for all the other floor plans that matched that and email it to them and myself at the same time. And so, and then once a week on Tuesdays I would call all of my clients and we would have conversation about where we were what had I seen what was changing in the market. Okay, we probably need to do a price reduction Tuesdays literally became price reduction day. Every day I was calling and getting in our every week, I was calling and getting 5000 5000 5000 as we were dropping prices and we were just chasing if the Joneses dropped their price. We had to drop ours in order to compete. And this went on for a while and I quickly noticed, and said to my husband, we are going to have to figure out.
I was already beginning to learn and put pieces together and systems to help people short sale out from underneath their homes, but I knew that we were going to also have to learn foreclosures, because I could see it coming. Way fast.
There was just way too much happening, quickly, and I could also tell that the short sales were not being worked or discussed the banks didn’t know what to do with them. I was just going to be a mess. So I learned how to help people, short sale and navigate the short sale process, and I helped over 60 families successfully short sale, their homes. In that same time frame. We were trying to short sale, our home. And actually we didn’t start to try to short sale our home till 2009. But in 2000 at that same time frame like 2007 2006 late 2007. My husband and our broker that we worked for at the time. Um, Matthew met Kenny was super fantastic taught, Tom, and several of the other agents in the office, how to work, our reo files which are foreclosures that have been completed and are now sitting on the bank desk, waiting to be sold. So Tom learned foreclosures, that kept us busy for many years. I learned the short sale strategy of side of things to try and help people before they went to foreclosure. And we worked through a lot of distressed properties which also brought heartache, stress, and hard times to those families that were going through it. It was a very hard time. But it was also gratifying to help the people that I was able to help to not go through it. When it came about, probably 2009, and the short sales started to slow down and President Obama put in a moratorium against the banks foreclosing trying to force them to work the short sales. Tom and I had to make a decision on what we were going to do, because we were a long ways upside down on our house that we had bought. And there was no way we were going to climb out from underneath it, especially with both of us being in real estate full time. And we just, we had to make a decision so we tried short sailing because we had no income for almost a solid year. And the banks wouldn’t work with us, they decided that we were not worthy of a short sale. And the day that our house went up on the auction block. They, instead of negotiating, or asking the buyer, that way we had a buyer tied to the house. The bank decided not to even ask the buyer for $1,000 difference, to try to get the deal to get pushed through and closed. And they sent us to foreclosure. And that happened to be March 17 St Patrick’s Day 2010. The day before, when I knew that they were not going to postpone our sale even though we had been begging. I decided that I was going to go down to the courthouse steps and sit and listen for when they called us off to see if they absolutely sold us, or if an effin investor bought us. So I’m standing down at courthouse steps and I’m listening to the conversations going on as they, you know, shout out our address, and a bunch of different people. I heard one say I’ve driven by there there’s people still living in it. Yeah I drove past it to they’re still there. Yeah. And just a couple quick comments, and they sent it basically officially nobody bid on us, it went to foreclosure. And I just remember standing there going, I can’t believe this. Okay, so now this means how quick Are we going to have somebody show up at our front door and asking, ask us to vacate a lot most of my eight my sellers, as we went through the short sale processes, if they didn’t get approved, there was a handful that didn’t. There were 60 some that I was able to help the ones that didn’t, a lot of times they still had six months to a year before the bank caught up and came and knocked on their door and said hey you need to get out. So, lo and behold, you know we thought at least we would have two or three months, that this happened I think on like a Thursday on Saturday morning. We had an agent who worked the foreclosures for the banks just like my husband did knock on the door and ask us to vacate the property within a week, because we were in a high demand area, they knew they could flip it they knew we had, you know, was brand for pretty much like three years brand new.
And they wanted their listing, because they could resell it quickly.
So, it was quite the learning experience.
Um, I still would have done exactly what we did, and made the decision that we were trying to short sale if there was no way we were going to carry that mortgage on Arizona income, with no real estate economy at that point.
And so, after that, we made a decision that we were going to make cross country move, and I’ll share that in my next chapter.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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Today’s market demands that the agent you choose has extensive experience in fields that most agents may have possibly studied, but it’s unlikely they have had successful outcomes at the same level as The Madsen Team.
NAR’s (National Association of Realtors) Shows in the report above that an “Average Realtor Sells Only 8 Houses A Year”
The Madsen Team SOLD over 230 homes in the last 3 years, many were distressed sales.
If you NEED to sell due to financial hardship we’ve been helping
homeowners ‘short sale’ and we are now ready to help YOU!
If selling your home is a necessity and you fear that your home may now be worth less than what you owe, we have extensive knowledge in successfully closing short sales, (in those cases we negotiate for the bank to accept less than what you owe them allowing the property to sell.)
Most agents are focused on hanging their for sale sign,
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Erika is a CDPE, (Certified Distressed Property Expert) with extensive knowledge in helping homeowners successfully maneuver the short sale process with banks due to her previous career in the Phoenix, AZ market. She is also a CLHMS, Certified Luxury Home Marketing Specialist skilled in marketing homes in the upper 5% of the market.
Tom is also a CDPE like Erika along with an SFR, Short Sales and Foreclosure Resource. As an REO listing specialist he concentrates on selling bank owned foreclosures, having sold over 300 properties in a short time frame he knows how to get any job done. They have won numerous awards such as Re/Max’s coveted Hall of Fame having closed over 1 million in gross closed commissions during their careers. The Madsen’s reside in Raleigh on the border of Cary with their children. We can help you with ANY of your real estate goals at www.themadsenteam.com or 919.520.6612
We are CDPE certified, Certified Distressed Property Experts
