Would you call a taxi for an emergency trip to the hospital, or would you call an ambulance?

Imagine that you’re at home alone and you have chest pains.  Is it a heart attack? It’s getting bad and you need to get to an emergency room immediately.  If you can’t drive, the standard procedure would be to call a taxi. What if the taxi takes too long to show up to your house?  What if you need help getting into the taxi? What if your condition worsens on the ride to the hospital? Does the taxi driver have the training and tools to help you during the trip?  Of course not! This is why you would call an ambulance! Similarly, you should not call just any real estate agent if you have a difficult mortgage or real estate situation. Most agents are unfamiliar with this territory.  You have to call a specialist.

A few weeks ago I got a call from a client that was in a serious bind.  He knew he had to sell his condo because he didn’t make his mortgage payment for the past few months.   A few weeks prior he listed his property for sale with a realtor friend. They had a good offer and were ready to open escrow.  But the day I received the call was the night before the trustee sale. They didn’t know if they could open escrow or sell the house with the house going to auction the next morning.  Fortunately, he called the right person.

I raced over to the client’s home, filled out the proper paperwork, then scanned and sent it to my attorney.  I have an excellent attorney that will work after hours for me. We worked for several hours that night. The next morning we faxed over the paperwork to the trustee and we postponed the trustee sale for another month.  

I cannot stress enough how much value my services provided to the client.  If he didn’t call me, his house would have sold at the trustee sale, he would have had a hugely damaging foreclosure on his credit, he would not have any money from the equity in his home and the next person knocking on his door would be the Sheriff.  The client called me (the ambulance) and I was able to prevent the foreclosure, allow escrow to open with the buyer he had, and when the sale closed a few weeks later, he received the equity that he had in his house. At the close of escrow I received enthusiastic thank you calls from the seller (my client) and his regular real estate agent.   The client could have saved himself a lot of stress (and some fees) if he had picked the right agent in the first place.

Moral of the story: if you have a difficult mortgage or real estate situation, you cannot just call any realtor you know.  You have to call a specialist.

Call me for a free consultation and to learn more about solutions to your real estate problems.