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With qualified buyers in the market place looking for the best deal they can get, they are first drawn to the idea of getting a bargain with a foreclosure. The belief is that the desperate banks will accept a good offer even if it's not near the asking price.

If the foreclosure is a clean home requiring minimum work to make it move in comfortable, then it's not likely to stay on the market long and often will see multiple bids, ultimately being sold over asking.

The market demonstrates a reluctance to pursue a listing that is being offered as a distressed or short sale listing. So much is written about the banks' reluctance to negotiate a short sale, or lack of response, or delayed response. This leads to the frustration of waiting weeks or months to hear whether or not the bank will say yes to the bid. When this happens, the house languishes in the system, and because of the delay, it ultimately does come back as the foreclosure.

The listing agents for the distressed property should be doing a great deal of homework well in advance of getting the listing into the system.

• Recognizing that the home will indeed qualify as a potential short sale is one of the first steps.
• Getting into contact with the loss mitigation department of the bank at the onset to at least get all of the requisite forms into the owner's hands and fully completed and documented.
• Pricing the home to reflect the tone of the market
• Creating an action plan that gets the home exposure with price reductions done to get the house a viable contract within a relatively brief period on the market
• Then making sure the bank has all of the documentation it needs to either accept or provide a reasonable counter to the offer

If the Listing agent has done their homework properly and communicated  consistently with the bank and the potential buyer there is a high likelihood that the deal can be done within 60 days. The house is occupied and maintained throughout the process, and the distressed owner gets a reprieve from a major mark to their credit rating, giving them hope of getting back into a stable lifestyle within a reasonably short period.