This transcript was prepared by the Transcribing HYVeneans™ TITLE: Can Virtual Assistants Help Real Estate Agents Negotiate Short Sales More Efficiently? WEBSITE: http://www.HireYourVirtualAssistant.com/Virtual-Assistants-Short-Sales Owen:
Can Virtual Assistants help Real Estate Agents Negotiate Short Sales More Efficiently? Well, I’ll let you tell me by the end of this presentation. The short in short sale, simply means that the property is sold for a lesser amount than its actually owed to the lender there is nothing short about a short sale its actually should be called a long sale because of the amount of time it takes, agents’ who specializes in short sale need to be patient and have the mindset of diligently following up with the lenders in order to get the process completed. The current Real Estate Market, I mean right now there’s a large number of potential short sale opportunities for Real Estate Agents due to the fact that there’s a lot of, there’s an increase in the number of home owners who cannot afford mortgage payments so it’s an opportunity for those agents who want to specialize in short sales, granted short sales take time and there’s a lot of documentations that an agent who is actively engage in short sales will have to put together. And well agents also need to spend a lot of time on the phone just trying to get a hold of the lenders I mean I’m talking about you being on the phone and you know waiting a long time, sometime by having to wait for someone who at the end doesn’t pick up the phone and you just wasted thirty minutes of your time away any longer so that’s a pain that’s a most agents have to deal with it comes to short service that long wait time, having to wait for lenders. Well, hiring a virtual assistants to you know help with the short sales process I think is actually a strategic move on the part of an agent the question now is how can hiring a virtual assistant ensure that the short sale negotiation is carried out more efficiently and effectively. Well I’m gonna share with you some points on how the Virtual Assistants can assist the agents with their short sale negotiations. First point the Virtual assistants can help the agents when marketing for clients because you know they can handle the incoming calls from prospects and they can also
help to set up appointments for the prospects to speak with the agent especially if they have you know if this prospects have real estate specific questions that they need to get answered. The VAs can help the agents to screen the potential clients to make sure that they actually have the conditions that set them up to be the right kind of short sale client. What I mean by that is first of all you know from my point of view a short sale client is someone who, first of all is experiencing some form of financial hardship and then secondly is someone who the property value has fallen so I mean the bank can expect any kind of retail price for the property so the property has to be sold for the current value which is less than what is actually owed hence it becomes a short sale. So those two (2) criterias have to be met and the VA can help to ensure that the clients are pre-screened to make sure that you know they match their criteria before the agent actually starts speaking with them. The VA can help to prepare the listing documents I mean this can be a time consuming tasks so you know once trained, the VA can actually handle the preparation of the listing documents and once they’re done can you know, hand them over to the agents so the agents can go out to meet with the homeowners and get the listing signed. During the initial call to the lenders, at this point usually the authorization to release information document has not been sent to the lenders so the VA would need to set up a three-way call with themselves, the homeowner, and the lender. Reason for this is call the VA needs to find out several key information about the short sale requirement from the lender and the instructions, such as what number to fax the authorization agreement, what number to fax the complete short sale packet, what is the status of the short sale, what is the status of the loan itself, and what is the status of any pending foreclosure and all those kind of questions can actually be systemized so that the agents doesn’t have to do it, don’t make the calls. They just put down a list of questions that they need to get up front and then the VA does it together with the homeowner on the call on the first call to the lender. Also as soon as the first call is done the VA can immediately work on putting together authorization to release document and send it to the lender once they get it back from the homeowner. The reason you wanna get this information to the lender as soon as possible, because it might take time for the lender to actually activate the authorization in the system so you wanna get that in as soon as possible.
The VA can also enter in the property information into the multiple listing service, essentially, the reason why you wanna do that is as an agent you got so many things you have to do so you don’t wanna spending time doing data entry that you actually train your Virtual Assistant to do for you. And another main thing another main reason why you wanna get the properties on
the
MLS
as soon as possible is because you know want the property exposed to as many buyers as possible so that you can start getting offers, and get an offer that ends up making sense for you to submit to your buyers and your buyers up signs it. I mean you get an offer that you submit to your seller your seller signs it and then you can now send that offer back to the bank as part of the short sale packet. The VA can help the agent by scheduling showings with the buyer agent. I mean once the property is on the MLS, especially if it’s the price make sense you can start having calls from buyer agents, and you want your VAs to handle that, especially if for instance, if the home is not vacant you wanna make sure that your VA calls the homeowner to find out when they’ll be available, so to find out when the home is available so that the buyer and their agent can go look at the property. If it is a situation where the selling agent usually likes to be at the property when the buyer show up then the VA has to make sure that all parties can meet at the property at a time that’s convenient for everybody. So, the VA basically handles that kind of scheduling for showing, and also even after the buyer and the buyer’s agent have gone to see the property. The VA can also be responsible for calling the buyer’s agent to find out, hey did you like the property or not did you know guys like it just to get some instant feedback. The VA can also help to, once an offers come in the VA can help the agent to gather all the necessary documents from all parties and then put together complete short sale packet. And once the packet is completed send this information to the lender. Once the short sale has begun this is after the short sale of packet has been sent to the lender and a couple of days has passed maybe two to three days the VA can now start calling the lender and handling all the time consuming follow up on the phone with
the lender. So that the agent doesn’t have to do it, so whenever the VA gets someone on the line he can easily transfer the agent unto to the call and then the agent can find out the status of the short sale and essentially walk the short sale all the way from the beginning of when the short sale packet has submitted all the way to getting approved. But just a quick note when the agents when the short sell packet is submitted it will go through process where is just in the bank system has been submitted and the VA can keep doing follow up over a period of time and then eventually the short sale gets assigned to a Loss Mitigator at the bank, and the VA can still do the follow up to make sure that to see what the status is with the short sale. Once it is assigned to the lost mitigation officer, anytime the VA gets the lost mitigation officer on the phone you know quickly transfers in the agent to the call and then the agent can you know continue in the process of the negotiation. So essentially the VA, having a VA handle several tasks in your short sale process as an agent. Basically frees up your time so you can focus on the most important things that you have to do as an agent. So in conclusion Real Estate Agents need to concentrate on the most productive activities and to me those activities are getting new listings, negotiating contracts, and closing transactions. Agents who are also short sale specialist need to concentrate on ethically influencing the broker price opinions so that it reflects the actual current value of the property and also they need to concentrate on spending time negotiating with the Loss Mitigation Officer so that the short sale is approved in a timely manner so that the buyer can close on the transaction. Well I like to get your feedback so please indulged me. Do you know of any other aspects of the short sale process that a Virtual Assistant can take over? Well I might be missing several steps, so please leave a comment by going to my blog http://www.HireYourVirtualAssistant.com/Virtual-Assistants-Short-Sales. Thank you. ### The End ### This transcribed audio content has been brought to you free of charge by Owen McGab Enaohwo; Need at transcript? The Transcribing HYVeneans™ will help you get it done affordably, accurately & fast!