Nestor and Katerina Gasset’s SHORT SALES SUCCESS is a comprehensive and informative dialog between the authors and the reader, designed from the experienced short sale and traditional sale real estate broker perspective. The reader can be a real estate agent or broker, home seller, attorney, title agent or prospective short sale buyer. Each will gain a valuable knowledge of the mysterious short sale process. You may snicker when I call the short sale process “mysterious” – but those heavily experienced with this “process” will smile and agree – it is indeed mysterious.
First let me let you know who I am. You can view my webpage at www.florida-counsel.com and my blog is on www.activerain.com/rpzaretsky. I am a board certified real estate attorney in West Palm Beach, Florida and I have been practicing since January 1976. In other words, I have been doing this a very long time. In the short sale arena my experience started by doing “quick sales” for national lenders I represented in Florida. To think that I and my associate at the time handled all the Florida foreclosures for some national lenders amazes me in this time of the “foreclosure mill” law firms and “robo-signing”. It was another time. Today we handle both lender foreclosures and borrower foreclosure defense, as well as loan negotiation for commercial loans as well as home loans and of course, “short sales”.
The Gassets and I met because of Active Rain (www.activerain.com) where we both are active bloggers. My blog posted there is a lawyer’s perspective of the short sale, loan modification and real estate issues in general. As a result of my long years of experience and the exposure through my blog, I have been quoted or appeared on CNN Money, Smartmoney.com, The New York Times, Business Week, The Palm Beach Post, Sun Sentinel, Daily Business Review, MSNBC TV and MSNBC.com and others, and provided seminars on short sales to lawyers through the Miami-Dade Bar Association, the Real Estate Councils for Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach County, and the Realtors Association of the Palm Beaches.
And here is a disclosure – I have referred business to Nestor and Katerina and they have referred clients to me. We each probably would want more referrals from each other, they have and I have others that we also exchange business.
Now back to Short Sales Success. Much of the book is gleaned from articles written by Nestor and Katerina on www.ActiveRain.com, and then expanded and explained. This Ebook is written in plain language – a good start since I am a firm believer in “keep it simple” and plain English. Unlike a ton of material that appears on the web or in Ebook or even print edition, the authors are not writing it as a “see one, do one, teach one” make believe treatise. So much read by Internet viewers, or taught by overnight success stories wonder boys (or girls) is excitement hype or wishful thinking, or even “so logical why didn’t I think of that?” Those brokers looking to rediscover themselves as well as buyers and sellers of short sale property will do well to use this book as one of their foundations of knowledge. Let me tell you why.
First, Katerina’s work as a coach to build success for real estate agents and brokers shows through in the simple approach of Short Sales Success.
Second, the book deals with “reality” and stays away from the “theory of short sales”. The reason it does this is because there is no “theory” in short sales.
The banks change the rules all the time – literally this can mean more than once a day! This book recognizes this fact. It also recognizes something that I present in my seminars on short sales – I begin my seminar with a few questions on the PowerPoint. The questions are really easy to “logically” answer and indeed, the group will by a show of hands determine that the questions were all answered correctly because the issues were logically applied to come to the solution. Then I tell the group to break for 5 minutes to allow them to go to their cars and to lock their logic in their car trunks and then return to their seats. The point I am making is that the relationship of logic to how the lender is going to deal with the short sale process is neither logical nor illogical – it is “a-logical” – without logic! Short Sale Success works with this concept to bring to solution the many short sale steps and potential roadblocks and does this with real stories as real examples.
Third, Nestor has “the touch” when it comes to dealing with lenders. He is able to think outside the box (ie: “alogically”) when it comes to getting to a lender / borrower solution. Combined with Katerina’s coaching skill set, they are highly successful as a team, and this shows through to the Ebook.
An Ebook is the perfect medium for short sale information. The changing short sale environment along with the government’s “programs” and lenders’ “solutions” for distressed homeowners is important and necessary to be reported in one place. A printed book cannot be that place because of the fluidity of the changing landscape of what works and what doesn’t in achieving short sale success. Remember, before 2006 the term “short sale” was mostly unknown to real estate agents and certainly none were making themselves “certified” in distressed property.
Where and when short sales are going is still not known. The marketplace tells most of the gurus that the halfway point for underwater properties and foreclosures has not been reached. That makes being familiar with the short sale process truly important to all real estate brokers.
Richard P. Zaretsky, Esq.
December 19, 2010