In this busted economy, Realtors and mortgage brokers have become “counselors” for the hundreds of thousands of homeowners who are upside down on their mortgages. Much of America has seen their home equity evaporate and find themselves stuck with large monthly payments on a property that has lost as much as 50 percent or more of its market value. It is a depressing situation and these homeowners are crying out for help.

“What should I do?” is a common request from beleaguered homeowners, “What makes the most financial sense for our situation?” There are a multitude of possible answers, but which works best for a prospective client? After all, these are hardly “one size fits all” situations.

Here are the common options:

• Accomplish a short sale to get out from under an upside-down property while minimizing damage to a homeowners credit score.

• Take advantage of loan modification opportunities. Either refinance or leverage government and lender programs to reduce a homeowner’s loan principle or monthly payment on a permanent or temporary basis.

• Another option is to rent out the home to support a prospective client’s move to a new area, hoping that eventually their equity will recover to a break-even point…or even create a profitable sales situation.

• Or how about doing a short sale, renting for a couple of years while the ex-homeowner’s credit is repaired, and then buying a new home at a much lower price?

• And sometimes simply letting the property go into foreclosure may be the best answer.

Whoa! This is complex stuff. How are we expected to sort all this out? It is easy to envision real estate agents and mortgage brokers spending hours developing spreadsheets or using cash-flow analysis software to find answers…if they have the skills and tools to accomplish this. Afterwards, these reams of paper must be compressed into a listing presentation that compares different courses of action to each other in order to explain recommendations. And about that time, the client asks, “Yea, but what if I buy down the principle…or do this?” Oops, back to the drawing board.

Obviously, manually trying to come up with recommended course of action for prospective clients is not cost effective for real estate professionals. So, are there automated tools that can accomplish this without consuming endless manhours?

Turning to Google, one can readily identify several software or Web-based solutions for short sale back-end management and creating listing presentations, but no unified answer for helping distressed home owners sort out their options.

What Realtors and mortgage brokers really need is a single solution that automatically analyzes alternatives for prospective clients and then creates a professional listing presentation. This package should include easily-explained backup data to satisfy analytical homeowners, plus easily-understood graphs and charts for “touchy-feely” personalities. And it must be easy to use, allowing real estate professionals to just enter numbers and instantly see results already formatted into a killer presentation. Moreover, this solution must accommodate “what if” questions, providing instantaneous answers that allow real estate professionals to smoothly overcome sales obstacles and close new business.

A package new to the market does just that. Home Decision Wizard provides all this functionality and more. The solution has already gathered acclaims from real estate professionals. Home Decision Wizard helps agents and brokers capture new business by outshining competitors and positioning themselves as true consultants with the best interest of clients at heart. And it does this without dramatically adding to the time to prepare listing presentations. Impressive!

Will the best course of action for a prospective client always be a short sale or loan modification? No. Sometimes, homeowners are better off just continuing to pay their existing mortgage or turning their home into a rental and relocating to a new city where the economy is improving. But even in these cases, guess who will eventually get a listing, loan application, or referrals from family and friends down the road? In this world, “what goes around comes around.”
 

About the Author

Al Kernek is a licensed real estate broker and small business marketing consultant. He is also a reseller of Home Decision Wizard. Learn more at his Website, www.RENewsletter.com, which focuses on offering affordable solutions and services to real estate professionals.

Real Estate Article