Merritt Island to the beach

Picture is from the Florida Biplane and looking east SR520 to the ocean.

The short sale we are talking about is at the upper left of the photo on the Banana river.
This home is in Cape Canaveral and features 5 bedrooms and 4 baths, home has 3697 square feet and beautiful views of the Banana River with incredible sunsets.  Home is priced at $599,000 and is a short sale.

Bank of America is laying off 30,000 people and we can only hope that none of these jobs come from the short sale department at a time when they should be adding jobs to keep up with short sales.

Jim Bagwell  

Short sale too good to be true?

River course 3rd tee box.

Have you found a short sale that is priced right?  It seems like it is too good to be true.  It may be too good to be true.  A lot of agents are pricing short sales at a point that will be sure to get an offer or maybe several offers then they will submit the package to the bank and wait for a counter offer.  Now the counter will be deduced by the bank by having a Broker Price Opinion completed which is really the same thing as an appraisal but can’t be called that.  They will then counter at the market value.

What should happen is the listing agent performs a Broker Price Opinion before putting the home on the market.  They should then list the property at or a little below the market value of the properties that they used for their BPO.  That is fair to both potential buyers and their seller.  That way buyers know they are going into the transaction with a fair chance to actually get the home to the closing table.

At Walker Bagwell Properties all our agents do a BPO when calculating their offer then the buyer of course has the option to offer less or more. 

I would never discourage anyone from a short sale; you just have to have a clear understanding of what may happen when making an offer.  We have closed too many for me to question the concept. 

Some of the short sales in the beach area that I think could be bought are as follows:

A townhome close to downtown Cocoa Beach, this property has 2 bedrooms 2 ½ baths with 1834 sq. ft.  The list price is $115,000 and should be bank approved.  The home has a large deck off the master bedroom.

We have a ground floor unit in Harbor Isles that has been totally renovated with 2 bedrooms 2 baths and the complex features 3 pools, exercise room, tennis courts, a 3 block long river boardwalk and you can walk to the beach.  List price is $179,900.

A direct ocean condo that features 2 bedrooms 2 baths on the 4^th floor.  Listed at $250,000, I would probably offer $210,000.

Hope this at least clarifies a bit.

Jim Bagwell

"Well I have never been to England"

"but I kinda like the Beatles"  Three Dog Night  When I came back from Nam, my guitar buddies made fun of me for liking this band.  Being in Nam I was supposed to like Hendrix and The Stones which I did but what are you going to do.

Picture is of a short sale on Tortise Island. 
Priced at $649,000 with 4280 sq ft on the canal with a pool, that is a lot of house for the money and Tortise Island is a great place to live.

File a lawsuit on your bank?  That is exactly what the federal goverment is doing to the large banks.  These are the very same banks that the federal government bailed out.  The suit involves that the banks didn't use due diligence in income verification for mortgages made in the boom.  Now I understand that there was no other reasonable option other than to bail them out but it is rather strange.  Call me crazy but it does seem that with the collapse of property values that it would be prudent for the banks to have all their properties appraised and reduce the amount of the mortgages to the appraised values.  They would save millions on the cost of foreclosures and also keep people in their homes and start receiving mortgage payments.  Call me crazy!

Jim Bagwell