I’ve seen advertisements claiming a 100% success rate on short sales. Can this be true?
If someone has only attempted one short sale and it was approved, they could certainly claim a 100% success rate. However, anyone with significant short sale experience knows that not all short sales get approved no matter how well they are handled. While most lenders will consider a short sale as part of their loss mitigation process, there are some cases where the lender will not even consider a short sale because they would rather take the house back. The exact reasons can be complex and beyond the scope of this FAQ, but feel free to contact us if you would like more information on this. Also, you may need to clarify their definition of “success”. Would they consider a short sale successful if the bank approved the short sale conditioned upon the seller paying a $50,000 deficiency on a first mortgage? How about if the bank approved the short sale but reserved the right to sue you later for the deficiency? We generally wouldn’t consider either of these situations to be successful out
