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7 Legal Pitfalls Of A Short Sale
I recently acquired my Certified Distressed Property Expert (C) (CDPE) designation. A CDPE is a real estate professional with specific understanding of the complex issues that confront homeowners in distress. Through comprehensive training and market experience, CDPE’s are able to provide real solutions for homeowners facing hardships in today’s market. My goal with this designation is to shorten the legal section in our local community newspapers here in the North Georgia Mountains with each passing week. In doing so, I will simply be helping families to stay in their homes, helping them to realize that there are many options other than walking away and ultimately facing Foreclosure. However a successfully negotiated Short Sale has consequences, and I would like to share with you 7 possible pitfalls or legal risks that you and your agent need to be aware of.
1. Misrepresenting tax consequences.
Although it’s true that the federal government passed a law in 2007 directing the IRS not to count mortgage debt forgiven by a lender as income, the provision is limited. It applies only to purchase money; it doesn’t apply to debt on a cash-out refinancing, and it doesn’t apply to second homes. There’s also a dollar limitation, albeit a generous one ($1 million for married couples filing separately, twice that for joint filers). “A lot of associates are telling people there are no tax consequences,” says Lance Churchill, a short sales specialist and trainer who operates in Boise, Idaho, and San Diego. “But it’s a limited law and you just need to be accurate about it.”
2. Misrepresenting how secondary debt is treated.
Practitioners might mistakenly tell sellers that all the house debt is forgiven once the primary lender approves a short sale. But that might not be the case, Churchill says. Holders of second deeds of trust don’t typically forgive the debt. More commonly, they accept a partial payment, like $2,000; and rather than write off the balance, they sell the balance to a collection agency for another few thousand dollars. In many states, these second loans are recourse, so sellers can be caught by surprise when the collection agency contacts them a year later seeking payment of the debt.
3. Acting on inappropriate lender requests for seller contributions.
It’s not uncommon for lenders to go after money that the sellers have in the bank or in a retirement account before they approve a short sale request. They’ll sometimes seek to put the onus on the real estate practitioner to get sellers to sign over a note for the amount they have in the bank as a condition of sale. But in states where mortgage debt is nonrecourse, lenders have no right to the money, and associates that suggest otherwise to the sellers might be later sued for negligence.
