|
 Serving
international bargain hunters
By
Mariwyn Evans
Closing a short
sale is tough
– all that complicated paperwork and those lengthy negotiations.
Working with foreign buyers can also have its challenges – acquainting
far-flung prospects with a whole new set of laws and financing procedures.
Combine the two and most real estate practitioners would just as soon
look somewhere else for business.
Not Debra Allen,
ABR®, e-PRO®. This sales associate with Prudential Arizona
Properties in Gilbert , Ariz. , has found a new niche in selling
Phoenix-area short sale properties to Canadian buyers. In fact, to
this winner of her company’s 2007 top customer service and
listing awards, it seemed a natural.
Born in Germany
to German-Asian parents, Allen’s comfortable working with different
cultures. She moved to Arizona in 1996 and joined the real estate
business in 2003, and soon she began expanding her international
contacts as a member of her state association’s International
Real Estate Council. She’s also studying for the Certified
International Property Specialist designation.
The short
sales skills are a more recent acquisition. A course at the 2006
REALTORS® Conference in New Orleans cued her into the fact that
short sales were on the rise. Soon she was developing a how-to guide
for putting together a good short-sale package, which she made available
on the Real Town blog, and began coaching her peers. And somehow
she found time between the 18 transactions she closed in the first
half of 2008 to teach a short-sale class.
Success in short
sales requires "a good system and great attention to detail," she
says.
"For example, you have to put the loan number on all correspondence
with the bank or the process can quickly go awry. These practices may
not shorten the process, but I believe that a good system is why I’ve
been able to close 95 percent of the 20 short sales I’ve negotiated."
Allen’s international
and short sales expertise finally intersected in 2008 when someone
from HiFX, a company that provides advisory services to currency
exchanges, saw articles she’d written about working with international
buyers and asked her to make a presentation to a group of second-home
buyers in Calgary,Alberta. Calgary seemed a good choice because it’s
just a couple of hours due north of Phoenix by plane.
Although her initial
PowerPoint presentation focused on all aspects of the Arizona housing
market, it was the discussion of short sales – and the bargains
they represented – that got the buyers’ attention, says
Allen. "Since the median price in Calgary is around $300,000
(Canadian), Phoenix homes priced as low as $200,000 look like great
deals."
From the group
of 355, she got 65 requests for information. But the desire for bargains,
fueled by media stories of a Phoenix market meltdown, also created
problems.
"The buyers
thought they could get rock bottom prices because of what they’d
read," she notes. They didn’t understand that in a short
sale, the bank is already accepting less than the full loan amount
and is not going to cut the price further.
As a result, for
the first few months, she says, "buyers just kept losing deals
because they were trying to lowball the price." Now, she’s
finally writing offers that are getting accepted and has two short
sales with Canadian buyers set to close.
What’s next
for Allen? She’s expanding her knowledge of REO sales.
(Reprinted
from REALTOR® Magazine, December 2008 with permission of
the
National
Association of REALTORS®. Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.) |
