Boise Short Sale Specialists

Beware of Boise Short Sale Specialists and Loan Modification Specialists in Boise and probably everywhere else.

As time goes on there have been more and more Realtors® advertising themselves as  Boise Short Sale Specialist.   I just got done researching on the MLS.  Something that is easy for any Realtor to do.  I have written about this several times in several places.  I think this is a Realtor ethics problem. 

Many of these "certifications" are a few hour courses.  Some are sponsored by banks.  First of all, in any profession to call oneself a "Specialist"  implies that is all you do.  In dentistry an Oral Surgeon is a specialist.  They do NOT do general dentistry.  A Cardiologist doesn't do general medicine.  But many of these so called short sale specialists, at least the Boise Short Sale Specialists that I look at list and try to do anything and Everything.  So they are NOT specialist.  You can be an expert in Boise short sales and do general residential real estate but if you are saying that you are a Boise Short Sale Specialists you are implying that you are limited in your real estate practice to being a short sale Realtor IN BOISE.  Not even in Nampa, Eagle, Kuna or other places.

I just spent some more time looking at the track record of two of the most aggressive Boise Short Sale Specialist Realtor® advertisers.  One closed 15 short sales this year, 44 total, some of those co listed, has 94 canceled, withdrawn or expired.  That is a 68% failure rate!  He has 19 short sale listings or co listings.

Another, in the same Real Estate group has closed 4 short sales in 2011 28 total including 5 co listings and 57 expired or canceled for a whopping  67% failure rate.

But I guess maybe that is good!  Because I have read several articles saying that the Florida failure success rate is only 14%.  That was about a year old article though so I am sure it is getting better. 

Who would go to a heart surgeon with a 50% failure rate?  Now maybe this isn't as serious, but failing a short sale can be devastating.  It usually results in foreclosure which is usually (not always) a worst outcome for a homeowner.

I have a 6.2% failure rate.   That is a 93.8% success rate.  Part was due to canceling after listing because the seller had multiple properties and decided to do bankruptcy after we listed so we canceled. 

My experience with people who have tried to do loan modifications are that they have even worse horror stories.  I have yet to meet anyone who has successfully completed a permanent loan modification.  Often when they call they are days or a couple weeks from their auction date.

Article 11 of the Realtor® Code of ethics includes the following:  " Realtors^® shall not undertake to provide specialized professional services concerning a type of property or service that is outside their field of competence unless they engage the assistance of one who is competent on such types of property or service, or unless the facts are fully disclosed to the client. Any persons engaged to provide such assistance shall be so identified to the client and their contribution to the assignment should be set forth. (Amended 1/10"

When I look at the advertising and web sites that some Realtors® post and publish, and then look at their experience I think it is clear that they are in violation of this Code of ethics.  A short sale experience is bad enough for a person to go through without finding out the hard way that they have an incompetent agent. 

People have to start someplace.  The best training for short sales is to do them.  But I think it is the responsibility of a Realtor to be honest in their representation.   We pay good referal fees.  You can save a lot of trouble and headache by referring your short sales to people like us who have done a lot and have a high success rate.  You can also co-list with someone with experience until you are a master. 

On the other had I want to warn people who are considering a short sale, or a loan modification.  You have to do your homework.  You have to ask the right questions.   You don't want to get tied up in a contract or process that is going to fail.  Ask any agent who holds themselves out to be an expert or a specialist to SHOW YOU.  It is easy to find anyone's track record on the Multiple Listing System. 

If you are thinking about doing a Boise Short Sale, or a short sale in Meridian, Eagle, Nampa, Kuna, or southwest Idaho or McCall Idaho please call me.  I will do all I can to get you the information you need and to help you.   If you are a Realtor® and are tired of beating your head against the wall with short sales refer them.  Call Jon Gosche at 208-870-2115!

Boise Idaho Certified Short Sale Specialist

Boise Idaho Certified Short Sale Specialist   

I recently published this on ActiveRain at www.BoiseRealEstateWebsite.com.  Please check it out and comment both places if you like.    

Boise Idaho Certified Short Sale or Distressed Property Experts.
I have just finished Googling Boise Short sale experts and see a lot of "Certified Short Sale Experts" certified by various teaching organizations. I just picked one randomly and looked up this persons listing and sales record. She or He had 13 cancellations, 7 expired short sale listings, 1 pending and 18 closed. Two of the canceled or expired subsequently sold. So out of 38 listings 18 closed.
Let's be fair and make it 36 listings because two were listed twice and subsequently sold. That still is a meager 50% closure rate. Actually that is pretty good considering most everything else I read shows that nationally only 14% to 20% of attempted short sales actually close! I also have looked at several other so called short sale specialists or distressed property specialists (or experts), and many have much worse success and less experience than this. Few had a lot better success ratio and lots of closings.
As soon as there is a market the "teachers" and "certifications" pop up all over. Some are just people giving classes with their personal certification. Some of these are a few hours long and you get a string of letters to put after your name.
Short sale certification is meaningless. Some of the certifications are developed by banks. Do you think they teach you to fight for the seller to not pay a deficiency in a deficiency judgment state, or fight for a buyer when the bank counter offers? I am not saying all training is worthless or all certifications are meaningless. But how do you tell the difference?
With Short Sales there is nothing more important than plain raw experience. Numbers count. Eventually everyone fails. Short sales are difficult. Failures should be the exception. For sellers failure can be devastating and lead to foreclosure or worse. Would you go to a surgeon with a 50% success rate for gall bladder surgery?
Anyone choosing an agent for a short sale needs to ask the potential agent to show them their record. The same with a buyer agent. You can save yourself and your buyer a lot of time and angst by looking in the MLS and looking at the listing agent’s record, both numbers and percentages of success and failure.
Be careful doing this. Be fair. Some listings will be canceled or expired but subsequently sold. Some will be canceled because the seller worked out another solution. When working with buyers, and another listing agent's short sale I look see cancellations or withdrawals I ask the agent to be fair, and see if there are any legitimate circumstances so not to unfairly count all cancellations against the agent. We look at how many they have listed, how many they have closed or failed to close. If we want the house and the agent is inexperienced I ask if we can help them.
I have no short sale certification but have been involved in over 100 short sale closings and with my partner have a 90% closure rate as of now. We have only 2 expired unsold and a few cancellations do to various reasons like other workout solutions. My partner in short sales John Boles has gone through Short Sale Genius certification and still subscribes to their ongoing updated training and networking and it has been very helpful.
I think agents being involved in short sales need to really consider Realtor Ethics. In fact Doctor ethics should be applied. “Do no harm.” If one is holding himself out to be a short sale expert and as a 50% success rate I think their ethics are questionable. I am not a short sale specialist. I have done and will continue to do a lot of short sales and I have been very successful closing them. I am comfortable and confident that I will get those that I list closed. When I first started, I told people the truth. When I first started short sales there was no certification that I knew of. The loss mitigation departments of most banks didn't even know what they were doing!
If you have questions or comments post away or call me at 208-870-2115.

Boise Short Sales

If you know anyone who has experienced a short sale in Idaho please have them come here and tell us about their experience!  We want to here the good the bad and the ugly about the short sale business.
Jon Gosche 208-870-2115.

Help With Idaho Short Sale.

After three years of doing about 100 short sales in Boise, Nampa, Kuna, Meridian, Star, Caldwell and other southwest Idaho areas we are still actively involved in a number of them.  Many people have had very bad experiences trying to do a short sale.  Although the "process" has gotten easier, the field is still full of misinformation, incompetency, fraud and deceit.

Many people who we have helped have come to us after months of trying to successfully completing a home loan modification.  To date I do not yet know one person who has successfully completed a permanent home loan modification.  We have had people come to us as late as a couple weeks before their foreclosure auction and still have been able to postpone the auction, procure a buyer, and close a short sale.

Only a handful of Realtors have successfully closed several short sales.  Many have attempted it and still about 80% of those attempted fail and the borrower ends up in foreclosure.  That is why I urge you to call me at 208-870-2115 if you are considering a short sale.  I will answer your questions, send you a short sale package and help you, or have one of my trained agents with a high successful closure rate help.

Short sales are not for everyone.  However often they are the best alternative to suffering the consequences of being severely upside down in a home loan.

If you are a Realtor and tired of beating your head against the wall trying to do short sales, you are welcome to call me too at 208-0870-2115.  We regularly have Realtors refer their short sales to us and we pay a very good referral fee.  We do have several Realtor References that we can give to you attesting to their experience with us.

  If you are reading this I know you are looking for some immediate online information.  So here it is:

1. A short sale is when a home owner (borrower) cannot sell their home for as much as they owe and a lender agrees to accept less than the full amount owed to remove their lien(s) on the property and allow transfer of the property.
2. A short sale is usually less detrimental to your credit than foreclosure.  It does affect your credit but often is recorded as a settled debt.
3. Through 2011 there have been no  Federal or Idaho State taxes owed on forgiveness of debt for owner occupied short sellers.  However investors may be taxed on the forgiveness.  It may be possible to have that wavered.
4. There is not yet good regulation on who who can negotiate short sales with a bank.  An "investor" can.  Only a licensed Real Estate Broker or agent, or an owner can advertise and mediate the sale of real estate however (in Idaho).  Realtors are not required to have any special training for negotiating short sales.  So as a result the field is full of people attempting to do this with little experience, little or no training.  There are still scams that are intentional and agents who are trying but just don't know how to do it.
5. It is easy for you to get a record of experience.  It is easy for us to show you our recorded experience including number of listings, expired or canceled and closed listings.  We can also show you any other Realtors record.  We can also show you short sale approval letters and provide references and testimonies from sellers and Realtors who have worked with us.
6. If you are missing payments you have a limited amount of time to get an offer and negotiate a short sale.
7. For some types of loans there are programs available that allow the short sale seller to walk away from closing with up to $3,000 for relocation.

Call me at 208-870-2115 for questions and/or a short sale package.  Link on this for more information including a typical rescue scam video.   Click on this link to see Boise short sale homes for sale.

Boise Real Estate in the fall of 2011

Well here we are the end of December 2011.  I can't believe how fast summer went.  Through the summer we have picked up three more excellent Realtors at Jon Gosche Real Estate.  To see all of us click on this.

This morning CNBC Realty check reported that August sales were up year over year.  Number of homes for sale are down.  I also found a very uplifting article listing Boise as third in a list of the 25 best places to retire in the country.  Here is the link to it.  Boise one of the best places to retire.

John Boles and I have now closed 100 short sales.  Distressed sales continue to be a large part of the home sales.  My daughter and son in law just bought their first rental house.  I did that for 20 years and sold my last just as the Boise Real Estate Boom started.  Five years ago buyers were renting for about 2% rate of return.  John and Kasey are going to get close to 12%.  If I were 10 years younger I would be buying rental property again.  If you are in your 20s to 40s or even 50 you might want to call me at 208-870-2115 and talk about it.   If you haven't already please check www.BoiseMeridianRealEstate.com out.  If you are thinking of buying or selling a home please call one of us.  If you think you might need to do a short sale definatly call me.  Who you have list your home for a short sale is a make it or break it decission.

Jon Gosche Broker, GRI
Jon Gosche Real Estate

Boise Real Estate in the summer of 2011

Boise appraiser and publisher of  " The Hennessey Report" says
"On average, a single family home in Ada County is getting offers in 5.3 months, Canyon County is 4.6 month from list date to offer date."

It is hard to believe that five and six years ago home prices were climbing so fast that people were in a panic to buy.  Over the past three years or so I have been involved in almost 90 short sales and there seems to be no end in site. A search at www.BoiseMeridianRealEstate.com showed 1,990 listings as short sales or foreclosures on June 26,2011.  Go there and take a look for yourself.  Property managers are telling me that rents are rising.  With that, extremely low interest rates and so many distressed sales one has to wonder if this train wreck is coming to an end.

Boise Real Estate - Boise Short Sales Seller Beware!

Blogger: Boise Real Estate - Boise Short Sale Sellers Beware! Boise sellers beware if you are considering trying a short sale to avoid foreclosure! I just read a must read article. I am going to give you the link at the end of my comments. When you read this it will be very clear to you that the most critical decission you make will be the Realtor you choose to list your home and negotiate any offers with your bank or banks. This article is in Florida, but the same is very true for Boise, Meridian, and Nampa Idaho and the Treasure Valley are. Most short sale attemtps fail. Some agents like the two of us at Jon Gosche Real Estate have a very high success rate, over 90%. We can show you short sale approval letters, the MLS which shows our listings, expired listings, canceled listings, and closed listings. Any agent that you consider to help you sell your home with a short sale should be asked to show you that information. Do not trust a certification! They are a dime a dozen and any Realtor can get some kind of "short sale certification" for a few dollars and very few hours of "training." Nothing replaces raw experience. Banks are different and requirements are different for FHA loans, HELOC loans and other loans. We have experience with all of them. They are all different. Some actually will allow you to receive money at closing. Most will not. Some will require that you have missed payments. Most do not and missing payments will impact your credit. Please go to and read this article entitled " What Happens When Short Sales Fail." There are consequences that may be devastating. Before you go there take my information. Jon Gosche Broker, GRI, e-Pro Jon Gosche Real Estate 208-870-2115. Bookmark this page, www.BoiseHomesandLandforSale.com and www.realestateradiousa.com/2010/02/26/short-sailes-fail/. Please then, do call me, Jon Gosche at 208-870-2115 and let me show you how I can help. Don't make the wrong decision on this one. Don't get tied up with an agent to fail. There are many agents listing lots of homes and closing a far too few of them. I will show you our sales, listings and even provide real people who have used us to sell their homes to talk with.

Should I Sell my Boise Home Now?

Should I Sell my Boise Home Now?

The morning of February 1, 2011, I spend a good deal of time searching the internet for a correlation between stock market prices and the housing market.  I found very little on the subject but I did find a lot of very interesting information.

As far back as 2007 you start finding articles talking about how the housing market will not start rebounding until late 2008 and 2009.  Well here we are at the beginning of 2011 and prices are still declining.  We have had a few fake out months, especially in the spring of 2010 when the homebuyer’s tax credit was artificially elevating home prices.

Last year was a great selling year for us because we did so many short sales.  We got to the point where we would rather have a short sale than a not short sale.  Even though many buyers shied away from short sales because of the time it took to close the deals, they bought them because the prices were compelling compared to sellers who "thought" that their homes were worth more than they were/are!  Again, especially during the spring, with the homebuyer tax credit tricking everyone into thinking prices were stabilizing we would get good, reasonable offers on not short sales but the overconfident sellers would be unbugable, loosing offers because they would compromise there price.  Now many of them are still in their house, listed at much lower prices than the offers they could have sold for in the spring of 2010.

So here is the question that you may be facing now.  Should I sell now, or hold out for the turn around.  Here is the answer:   You don’t know when the turnaround will be!  I don't know when the turnaround will be and NO ONE really knows!  

If you listen to Yale economist Robert Shiller, and look at his chart, you might think we are at the bottom.  If you look closer we are still 20% above the 0% line which is back to the base.  But Shiller and his chart are not giving the entire picture at all.  To get back to the average doesn’t it make sense that prices will have to drop to below the base as far as they overshot it?  It does.   It doesn’t mean that that IS going to happen but if you look at long term charts that is certainly the way it looks. 

Should the above happen, housing prices could keep falling and not return to the base until the overshoot which could take until 2012 and take until 2016 or even 2020!  So returning to the question of selling, if your living in the house you are going to live in until say, 2017, or 2020 it probably isn’t going to mater what you do (did) by then.  But if you are in a position of having to move for the next five years you are taking a clear risk.  Especially if you are moving down. 

If you are going to buy a more expensive home after you sell, or move to a more expensive area the trade may even out the difference.  But if you are hanging on for the turn around, or stubbornly chasing the market down with your home for sale now, like millions of others you may crash before we hit the bottom.   Look at the article and charts on  http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article25597.html.  There are three charts on this page so you need to scroll down and look at all of them.  Call me and I will send you the local housing data.  I am not selling my house because I don’t want to move.  But if I were moving in the next two years I WOULD be selling now and locking in the last 20% to even 50% that I might lose before the probable real bottom that could be in somewhere between 2012 to 2016 or even 2020 comes around. 

One other thing should be considered:  It really looks like (because of the “wealth effect”) that home prices lag the stock market.  The general economy lags the stock market and the actual wealth which allows for home price inflation lags the economy.  Again I say no one knows the bottom for sure.  But the truth is that very few actually buy at the bottom and sell at the top.  Time is the regulator.

To look at the best Boise area real estate web page go to www.BoiseMeridianRealEstate.com.  For a free market analysis on your home call Jon Gosche at 208-870-2115. 

Boise Homes for Sale

Boise area real estate sales were brutal in 2010 like most of the country.  My team did 78 transactions and for the first time we sold more listings than buyer side purchases.  That is because two of us started doing short sales the year before the "crash" so we were ready for it.

We also launed http://www.boisemeridianrealestate.com/.  It is the most state of the art real estate web page in the Boise Treasure Valley area.  Buyers can search like a Realtor and actually, I like it better than the Realtor MLS.  You can see street views, areal views and much more.  Please pass it on to your friends and relatives who are considering either buying or selling.  http://www.boiserealtystore.com/ and http://www.boisehomesandlandforsale.com/ are still on the top of Google and most of the search engines for many main key word real estate searches for Boise, Meridian and the area.  It is very buyer and user friendly.

Pending home sales were up in November.  That is encouraging.  Conventional wisdom is that real estate sales slow down in the winter, but so do the number of listings.  So it isn't necessarily harder to sell because the number of homes for sale is less.  As spring comes people start listing.  So if you are planning to move this year right now may be the best time of the year to get listed.  I would welcome a call to talk with you about it at 208-870-2115.  Or email to me at gosche@cableone.net.

Jon Gosche Broker, GRI, e-Pro
Jon Gosche Real Estate