Armed with Experience: A SHORT SALE STORY

Mr. Freed,

I just finished reading your article with "Kitty's" Hardship Letter to Countrywide. This brought back some bad memories. Below is my short sale story I wrote for Wiki. Below is resent, last July (2008).

If you can use it to help others please do. I wrote this for others to learn from my experience seeking no reward or payment.

All is verifiably true and unexaggerated as it happened. Please feel free to use it on your sight if you think it will help others.

Thanks Bart Horn

A SHORT SALE STORY

By Guest Author Bart Horn

I need to start off by saying I'm just an average hardworking homeowner caught up in this crisis, as many others are. I have no professional training in the mortgage industry what so ever. What is to follow is based off my own short sale experience.

Negotiating with the lender and my real estate agent (REA) was extremely painful, and motivation enough to share this with the Wiki readership. I learned the hard way that it is a grave mistake to go forward with a short sale unprepared, without competent, professional assistance.

I was not careless or of simple mind, I was uninformed, plain and simple.

To put all circumstances in perspective, after living in a home we purchased for three full years, our first - not an investment property - we relocated to another state due to self imposed job transfer to facilitate my wife, who is permanently disabled, so as to be closer to her immediate family.

We placed our home on the market in June 2006, anticipating an expeditious sale at the beginning of the decline. Needless to say the home remained unsold and vacant for 18 months.

With all equity earned in the home sucked dry by unexpected home repairs from undisclosed problems with the home, that left us unable to reduce the price of the home to make the sale more attractive, that's entirely another story. An offer did come in as last ditch effort, the only offer to enter escrow was right before the close; the buyer went into default in Dec 2007.

Merry Christmas.

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