Hey there! Just wanted to let you know that my lovely wife Lydia and I will be performing Love Letters (presented by Theatre Conspiracy) on Friday, May 25th at 8pm at The ALLIANCE for the ARTS Foulds Theatre in Fort Myers.

This will be our theatrical debut so kindly keep your rotten tomatoes at home. We are one of nine couples performing this piece for 9 different charities. We are performing to benefit the Alliance for the Arts Education Programming.

What exactly is “Love Letters” you may ask?

Love Letters is a Pulitzer Prize nominated play that centers on two characters that read notes, letters and cards that they have written to each other over a 50 year span. They discuss their hopes and ambitions, dreams and disappointments, victories and defeats in the correspondence that have passed between them throughout their lives. Tickets are $18 and are available by calling 239-936-3239 or visiting the Theatre Conspiracy website.

Here is a detailed schedule of couples that are performing:

• Friday, May 18th 8PM – J. Mitchell Haley and Joann Haley to benefit ICAN.
• Saturday, May 19th 8PM – Terry Tincher and Mimi Tincher charity TBA.
• Sunday, May 20th 2PM – Will Prather and Andrea Fiore Prather to benefit HOPE Clubhouse of SWFL.
• Thursday, May 24th 8PM – Todd Blanton and Stephanie Davis to benefit PACE Center for Girls.
• Friday, May 25th 8PM – Chris Black and Lydia Antunes Black to benefit Alliance for the Arts Educational programming.
• Saturday, May 26th 8PM – Bill and Lauren Taylor to benefit Junior Florida Everblades.
• Thursday, May 31st 8PM – Stephen Hooper and Ellen Poage Hooper to benefit Sidney and Berne Davis Art Center.
• Friday, June 1st 8PM – Bob and Carrie Lund Cacioppo to benefit Florida Repertory Theatre.
• Saturday, June 2nd 8PM – Greg Longenhagen and Liz Abbott to benefit Olivia’s Wagon of Wonder.

We would love to have you come join us on Friday, May 25th and help us support the Alliance for the Arts.

As always, if you’re searching for a Florida Short Sale Attorney to help you orchestrate a short sale with your lender, I would truly appreciate your business. You can contact me at Facebook.com/WingedFootTitle, at WingedFootTitle.com/contact, or simply call (239) 985-4142.

~Chris

This is the 6th tip of “10 Questions You Should Ask About Florida Short Sales” eBook, which is available as a FREE download.

Lenders occasionally require a new obligation in exchange for approving a Florida short sale. This new obligation is typically in the form of a promissory note.

Most promissory notes required after short sales are unsecured debt obligations – not unlike the note you signed for your original home loan but without the mortgage to secure the debt.

Unsecured debt is debt that is not tied to or secured by collateral like personal or real property. There is only the borrower’s personal obligation to repay the amounts contemplated in the note.

In our experience, most promissory notes have been nominal relative to the amounts owed under the original debt. Often, the duration of the note is limited to a few years; and the interest rate is usually zero or very low.

The principal balances of the notes vary greatly, and depend on the balance of the original loan and the borrower’s ability to repay on that future obligation. Like most everything, these obligations are typically negotiable. A lender may start by asking for $10,000 and ultimately accept $1,000.

This is the 5th tip of “10 Questions You Should Ask About Florida Short Sales” eBook, which is available as a FREE download.

If you are considering a short sale, the effect of such an occurrence may not be the most pressing issue. It could be that unemployment, curtailment of income and other market forces have already wreaked havoc on your credit score.

Nonetheless, or if you are considering a short sale for more strategic reasons, it is important to understand that a short sale will affect your credit worthiness.

Credit scoring is very complex.

It is therefore impossible to say with any certainty how significant or negative an effect a short sale will have on your credit worthiness. A short sale’s effect on credit will depend on many variables, like where your credit score is when you miss a mortgage payment or how many payments you miss before the short sale closes.

If your credit score is of particular concern to you, you may want to discuss the impact of a short sale with a finance or credit professional. You should discuss the short and long term effects, and you should consider what your credit worthiness is worth to you. Ultimately, you should weigh the value of your credit worthiness to the costs associated with maintaining your mortgage payments or foreclosure.

There is one bit of guidance from the finance industry that may help you in your analysis.

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA and VA have guidelines for the eligibility of borrowers for their home loans after events like foreclosure, deed in lieu of foreclosure and short sale. There is even a helpful matrix that compares how each treats borrowers after these events.

As you will find, there is little difference between how these financial institutions treat borrowers after foreclosure or short sale. However, the most notable difference is the slightly better grade for potential Fannie Mae borrowers after a short sale.

Click the eBook icon on the right to download it for FREE and visit wingedfoottitle.com for more information on short sales and short sale success stories.

This is the 4th tip of “10 Questions You Should Ask About Florida Short Sales” eBook, which is available as a FREE download.

This is the 3rd tip of “10 Questions You Should Ask About Florida Short Sales” eBook, which is available as a FREE download.

This is a very frequent question, and its analysis is a bit complex because “cost” is such a broad term. Later in the eBook, we will look at Promissory Note requirements, cash contributions and association dues as potential “costs” of completing a Naples short sale. For this section, let’s simplify things a bit and look at standard transaction or closing costs and what you should expect to pay (or not pay).

With regard to ordinary closing costs, a short sale should cost you very little. Here’s why. In a short sale, the lender will agree to absorb many of the ordinary closing costs that are customarily the seller’s responsibility. In our experience with Florida short sales, lenders will usually agree to absorb at least the following closing costs:

• Real Estate Commissions
• Title Insurance Premium (Owner’s Policy)
• Closing Services Fee
• Title Search Few
• Documentary Stamp Tax on the Deed
• Property Taxes

With regard to Real Estate Commissions, short sale lenders often agree to pay up to 6% of the purchase price. Sometimes, though, a lender or its investor may “cut” the realtors’ commissions to 5% or even less. It is a good idea for you to consult your listing agreement – the agreement between you and the listing broker/agent – to understand what your obligations are with respect to real estate commissions if the lender demands a reduction.

Lenders will also absorb much of the costs related to title insurance. The cost of the owner’s policy of title insurance, customarily the responsibility of the seller in most of Florida, is typically covered up to the state promulgated (i.e., the rate proscribed by the State of Florida) rate. Short sale lenders will also pay (I say “pay” because the cost is ultimately coming out of the bank’s pocket) a customary “Closing Services Fee”, which covers services performed by a licensed title insurer, title insurance agent or agency, or attorney agent in the agent’s or agency’s capacity as such, including, but not limited to, preparing documents necessary to close the transaction, conducting the closing, or handling the disbursing of funds related to the closing in a real estate closing transaction in which a title insurance commitment or policy is to be issued.” Fla. Stat. §627.7711(1)(a). Recently, many short sale lenders have become reluctant to absorb title search fees. Unfortunately, this is a hard cost which is required for the issuance of title insurance. In other words, we could not issue title insurance without a title search and the title search itself costs money to produce. Fortunately, though, the cost of the search is low relative to its value – ordinarily about $150. In these instances – where a lender refuses to absorb a necessary hard cost – you should expect to pay that cost.

Naples short sale lenders typically agree to account for property taxes as well. There a few basic scenarios for dealing with taxes worth discussing.

Lenders will almost always pay for back taxes which may be due from previous years. These outstanding taxes create a lien on the property and lenders understand that it is a cost of the success of the transaction.

The current year’s taxes may be treated a bit differently. As you likely know, Florida property taxes are paid in arrears, meaning that your 2011 property taxes, for example, are not due and payable until November, 2011. If your short sale should closing before November, the lender will agree to absorb charges for property taxes to account for the number of days you owned the property during that year. You may hear us at the title company refer to these calculations as “prorations.”

Should your short sale close after November, the lender would likely absorb the full payment of the property taxes and would receive a prorated credit from the buyer of the property for the number of days the buyer will have owned the property through the tax period. This all gets a bit confusing; but suffice it to say that you should not ordinarily anticipate having to pay for property taxes in order to close your short sale.

If you have any questions about the cost of your Naples short sale solutions, or you would like to be referred to a Certified Public Account to find out more about Short Sale Tax Consequences, please don’t hesitate to call me at (239) 985-4142 or contact me online. Join our short sale survivor club to get the tools you need to survive your Naples short sale.

All the best,

Chris Black , Esq.
Winged Foot Title, LLC.

This is the 2nd tip of “10 Questions You Should Ask About Florida Short Sales” eBook, which is available as a FREE download.

In a nutshell, the lender’s right to pursue you for the deficiency after a short sale stems from your obligation to the lender under the Note. If you remember, when you took out your home loan (whether to refinance or to purchase), among the hundreds of pages were two very important documents:

• The Note
• The Mortgage

To understand the basis for the lender’s deficiency rights after the short sale process, it is important to understand the distinction between these two documents and what happens to them in a Florida short sale.

The Note is your personal promise to repay the sum you borrowed from the lender. The Mortgage, on the other hand, is the security instrument or the pledge of your interest in the real property as collateral for the amount borrowed. In the short sale process, the lender must agree to release its Mortgage lien against your property so that the title insurance agent may issue a clear policy of title insurance to the buyer. However, Florida law does not require your lender to release or cancel your Note obligation. Unless your lender explicitly releases you from future liability in its approval letter, it should be clear that they can pursue you for the deficiency under Florida law.

You will rightfully wonder what is this “deficiency.” The deficiency is basically the difference between what you owe your lender at the time of the short sale and what the lender nets from the short sale. Let’s look at a very simple example. You owe $250,000 to your lender on a property that is worth only $200,000 and you must sell the property. For the sake of easy math, let’s say that a buyer offers $200,000 to purchase your property and that your closing costs (real estate commissions, title insurance-related fees, etc., which will likely be absorbed by your lender) are $15,000. The net to your lender from the short sale would be $185,000. And thus your “deficiency” would be $65,000 ($250,000 minus $185,000).

In the worst case scenario – where the lender retains the right to pursue you after the short sale – your lender could sue you for that deficiency amount. In Florida, this requires litigation and, not surprisingly, litigation costs money. The statute of limitations for this type of action in Florida is 5 years from the date of default. That is to say, should the lender retain its right to pursue you for the deficiency it would essentially have 5 years from the date of your default to bring that action. If the lender successfully litigates the issue and gets a judgment against you, it may file the judgment in Florida (essentially in the public records of any county where you may own property) and that judgment is valid for an initial period of 10 years. At or near the end of that initial period, the lender may re-certify the judgment which validates it for another 10 year period. After 20 years, the judgment becomes ineffective by operation of law.

One of the most important things for you to consider after you’ve thought about these technical issues is how the potential worst case scenario deficiency judgment could affect you. The effect of a money judgment is governed by state law. A full analysis of the effect of a money judgment is beyond the scope of this eBook.

However, I cannot stress enough how important it is for you to vet this issue with independent legal counsel who understands debtor/creditor legal issues.
If you own property in other states or jurisdictions (including outside the U.S.), you should also discuss this issue with legal counsel in that state. A creditor with a judgment from Florida can domesticate that judgment in other states, which means that they could take it to the other state and file it there. The other state’s laws could result in a significantly different effect on you than Florida’s. This is especially important if you might have bought investment properties or a second home here in Florida but make your primary residence in a different state.

At this point, you should understand that your lender may have the right to pursue you after your Florida short sale; what the deficiency is; how long your lender has to initiate an action to pursue the deficiency; how long a judgment could be valid against you; and the importance of finding out just how a judgment could affect in the worst case scenario.

My point is not to scare you or to dissuade you from moving forward with your short sale. Instead, I want this eBook to act as a guide to help you decide whether or not a short sale is the right thing for you. And I want you to be able to make that decision as early as possible to the extent that you can so that if you decide to move forward you can do so with the commitment that will be required of you to complete the short sale process.

Part of making a sound decision is using all of the resources and data available to you. Because the real estate market and economy in general have resulted in so many short sales over the last few years, there is a significant amount of data available related to deficiency rights. For example, you have access to prior short sale approval letters, which are very instructive since many lenders and servicers rarely change the language in their approval letters. While the past is  not a guarantee of what will come, you can at least use these resources to prepare as best you can. Along those same lines, some rather simple research will allow you to determine how many post-short sale deficiency suits have been brought by lenders. You should find that there have been very few thus far.

Make the best decision that you can about regarding your Florida short sale process. Please don’t hesitate to call me at (239) 985-4142 or contact me online if you have any questions. I’m here to help you!

All the best,

Chris Black , Esq.
Winged Foot Title, LLC.

Hey there! Just wanted to give you a heads up that the Bonita Springs-Estero Association of Realtors® will be presenting the Southwest Florida Global Real Estate Expo tomorrow (3/2/12) from 9am to 5pm at the Holiday Inn Airport.

I’ll actually be a part of the short sale and foreclosure panel from 11 – 12:30 pm, so if you plan on attending, I hope to see you there. It’s only $10 and it’s open to the public so it would be great if you would attend. Here are the rest of the details:

If you’re having trouble reading the rest of the information above, just click the photo and you can download your own copy. Just a recap of some of the highlights:

• Over $2,000 in prize giveaways!
• 2 iPads
• 42″ Flat Screen TV
• iPod
• Bose Wave System
• Lunch Specials
• Happy Hour from 5 – 7 pm with live entertainment and FREE pasta bar
• …and of course, the Short Sale & Foreclosure discussion from 11 – 12:30pm.

See ya tomorrow!

~Chris
Winged Foot Title

This is the 1st tip of “10 Questions You Should Ask About Florida Short Sales” eBook, which is available as a FREE download.

Or, Could I be liable for a deficiency judgment after my short sale?

Is the by far the most frequently asked question and for good reason; because in Florida, the most honest answer you could expect is  maybe. To be sure, your lender may be able to pursue you for what is known as “the deficiency.”

Let’s take a quick look at why that is the case in the state of Florida. After that, I will discuss what the lender could do with its deficiency rights and what that could mean to you as a debtor.

If you have any questions about your Florida short sale solutions, please don’t hesitate to call me at (239) 985-4142 or contact me online.

All the best,

Chris Black , Esq.
Winged Foot Title, LLC.

That day was a clear reminder of just how proud I am of our team here at Winged Foot Title. As you may imagine, a process this complicated yielded many useful insights which we employ daily in our operations. But as we surge into 2012, we wanted to share with you three of those  insights that may be helpful in your business as well.

We call them our “Three Cs”:

Commit; be Creative; and Communicate.

• Commit. Much of our success in orchestrating and closing this Cape Coral Short Sale monstrosity resulted from our commitment to both the outcome and to the processes that would help us get to the outcome. Committing to the outcome was pretty easy and I’m sure that part is for you as well in your business – “I want to get the short sale approved so that we may close the transaction and issue title insurance.” Commitment to the processes that got us to that outcome was, of course, more difficult. Our initial zeal is often dulled by what we cannot control – like unreturned phone calls or obstinate negotiators. Trust me, we talked each other off the ledge many times during the course of this short sale; but we persevered and remained commitment to each process, to each piece of the puzzle. Ultimately, we knew that we would fail if we did not stay committed.

• Be Creative. We faced 12 separate lienholders in this short sale. To say that it was like herding cats would indeed be an understatement. Every creditor involved was looking at taking a huge hit; and many of them had written off the debts as uncollectable because of their lien priority and their market knowledge. We knew that this would not work like your typical multiple lienholder short sale, where the first lienholder offers the second a pittance to which the second ordinarily acquiesces. It would take creativity to make this work and we insisted on being creative at every step. We worked with the real estate agents and buyer to structure the offer in such a way that accounted for the myriad payoffs we needed to make. And we had to be very creative in ferreting out those lienholders who were hard to track down. Had we not stepped out of our normal processes and routines, we would have failed miserably at closing this deal. Competition is fierce no matter what business you’re in. There are many others out there seemingly just like us (you and us), pounding the same pavement and chasing the same clientele. Creativity, though, distinguishes. Creativity and innovation led to the development of our Suite of Short Sale Services (like our the Short Sale Survivor Tool Kit), which resulted in our company’s continued growth and success in an otherwise flat market. Creativity made us memorable and stand out, which created more sales leads and more conversions of those leads in spite of how goofy some of us felt in those outfits – click the link to check out the photos! We are confident that our creativity will continue to distinguish us from others in our industry and we challenge you to be creative in your business.

• Communicate. There is simply no substitute for open and honest communication in business. In this particular transaction, we were sure to communicate early and often the proper expectations those involved should have. This included the buyer and seller and their agents as well as the many lienholder. To be sure, we under-promised and over-delivered. And we made certain to keep our communications frequent and consistent, not letting any of the lienholders forget about us and keeping everyone up to date even if there had been no progress. Had we dropped the communication ball during this long transaction, there would have been little chance of its success. In a computer screen-driven 2012, communication skills will undoubtedly continue to erode. Communicating more effectively, more honestly and more consistently than your competition will set you apart. We have received rave reviews from our weekly short sale updates and from our newly name Consumer Engagement Program (a communication system that actively engages the consumer at eight points during the standard residential real estate transaction). Taking these extra steps has definitely distinguished us from our competitors and has helped to create memorable experiences for our clientele.

Hopefully our Three Cs will be helpful to you and your business in 2012. If you have any questions about our Three Cs or anything else, please don’t hesitate to call on us (239) 985-4142 or contact us online.

-Chris Black