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If you are in financial distress and fear you will lose your home, you may feel frustrated and hopeless.  Some of the alternatives presented to you may seem pretty much the same: you will lose your home. You can do a short sale, let the bank foreclose, or file bankruptcy.  Your choices may have the same import as waiters on the Titanic asking diners sitting in water to their waists if they preferred coffee or tea.

Being in this situation is not what you anticipated when you scraped and saved for your home. However, if you can adopt the philosophy that homes and material things are replaceable, you can get through the situation and aim for a fresh start.  Short sales, foreclosure, or  bankruptcy can provide this. What you should aim for is the solution that has the smallest long term impact on your credit score and the greatest chance for you to move onto the next step with dignity.

Preserving your credit score is important. Not only is a good credit score necessary to get future credit and get it at a decent rate, it may impact your ability to rent or buy a house, get insurance, and even get a job. If you fall on hard times, you will take an inevitable hit.  Your concern should be with preserving your score as best you can. The means that in order of the least damage to your credit, it is short sale, foreclosure, and bankruptcy.

Short sale: If your home’s value is not enough to pay off the mortgage, you could ask your lender to authorize a short sale where you can sell the home for less than you owe.  This approach saves the lender time and money compared to a foreclosure and allows you have more time to plan your nest move as the process takes a while. You will lose 80 to 100 points on your credit request, but within 18 months the impact on your score should lessen.

Foreclosure: When the bank takes your home, you lose 200 to 300 points on score and can’t buy another home for at least three years.  Given the large numbers of foreclosures these days, foreclosure might have a relatively small social stigma and economic impact over time.

Bankruptcy: Bankruptcy will remove your debts or allow you to repay them over time, depending on whether you file Chapter 7 or 13 bankruptcy.  The number of points you lose depends on what your credit score was before you filed, but the event will stay on your record from 7 to 10 years. Despite the effect on your credit rating, this may still be the best choice if you are burdened down with a lot of other debts besides your mortgage.

Any of these methods can offer a fresh start to you if you are in trouble.  If you want to sell your home now, Express Home Buyers can offer exciting alternatives. Whether you are in financial trouble, face foreclosure, have a property that needs a lot of work, or have an inherited house, we can sell your house fast. Because with us, it’s Guaranteed2Sell.

Where Did All This Stuff Come From…?

Whether or not you’re planning to sell your house any time soon, it never hurts to get things in order.  Even the tidiest homeowners are amazed by how quickly houses can become inundated by the clutter and items they accumulate.
Here are some easy tips toward consistently maintaining order and balance in your home, and ensuring that come sale time you don’t find yourself waging the war against disorder for the first time.

You Need Discipline and a Game Plan

• Instead of dabbling and making gradual improvements here and there throughout the home, focus your efforts on one room at a time.  Don’t move onto another room until the task at hand has been thoroughly completed.
• Force yourself to stay disciplined, and adopt the “in and out” approach.  For every new item you add to a room, remove an older one.
• If you have kids, make the cleaning process fun for them (yes, it is possible).  Whether it’s by giving them incentives to keep their rooms tidy and their personal belongings out of public spaces, or showing them how rewarding the result can be give them a tangible reason(reward, privilege, bribe)  to observe these rules even when they haven’t been reminded to.
• Have a vision of what the room SHOULD look like before you tackle it.
• Use hangers to sort the clothes you wear the most from the ones you break out only on special occasions.  Needless to say, garments that are out of season should be kept separately (a sealed, moth-proof rack for your hangers can be a crucial investment for your basement/attic space).
• When considering whether or not to retire an item, force yourself to decide whether you really, REALLY need it.  If you have a hard time deciding, you know what to do.
• Treat your kitchen as a sacred area: the real estate that includes your stove, sink, refrigerator and countertops should be occupied by useful items only.

When it comes time to sell your house fast, you will be more than rewarded for the work you have done on the front end. Of course, if you do decide to sell your house in the Maryland, Washington DC or Virginia area, give us a call. We can help.

You’ve probably been hearing a lot about short sales in the past few months- chances are you know someone who’s been through the process. And if you’ve been hit as hard by the current recession as many have been and have a home you’re having trouble affording, you may be considering a short sale as a viable option.

What’s a Short Sale?

Let’s assume you understand the basics of the concept, and are familiar with the broad strokes: basically, a short sale is what occurs when a lender agrees to accept less than the amount owed against a home because there is no longer enough equity to sell and pay all costs of sale.  Put simply, if your payments are in arrears and it’s looking more and more like the lender won’t be able to recoup the full cost of the home, a short sale may be their best way of their getting something rather than nothing.

It Isn’t Perfect, But…

There’s no question that a short sale is far from an ideal outcome for anyone who owns a home.  If you find yourself in dire straits with either foreclosure or a short sale looming as your only two options, which do you choose?  Consider which does more damage to your credit?  Opinions on this topic vary, but the bottom line is, they both do a lot of harm.  Foreclosure typically knocks between 200 and 300 points off your score, while short sales have been known to trim your credit rating by anywhere from 100 to 300 points.  Bottom line: your credit will suffer either way, although you have a slightly better chance of losing less money and credit rating if you work with a real estate agent and negotiate a short sale.

It’s a Way to Protect Your Credit Rating.

We understand how hard it is for anyone to be facing these possibilities; if you’d like to know more about this process or have any other real estate questions answered, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us. Express Realty Services has a fully-staffed short sale department; we can help you work through every facet of your short-sale negotiation.