Ron,

I believe that the 1099 exclusion is only for homeowners who acccept the bank to forgive their original mortgage. It is not for those who have refinanced and/or adding HELOC or second mortgages and have taken their equity out while things were hot!

Those homeowners will still be hit with a 1099 or bring some of the cash at closing!

Sagine

Ron, how you been? Haven't seen you post for some time. We are getting all our Texas news here from Bill the Scot. Glad to see you have come back to give us some balance.

As for "short sales", I think all those agents who are misleading the public about the process with the "subject to bank approval" should be taken out back behind the barn.

You see a post in the MLS for a steal and it will almost always have "subject to third party approval" hidden in the comment section. So, you call the agent and NO, he hasn't talked to the bank and doesn't know the mortgage amount or if there is a 2d mortgage on it. And, NO he doesn't have comps to support the selling price. So, you ask the agent why he listed it five months ago for $30,000 more than it was worth?

Click!!!!

Agreed that the short sale is a definitely needed. It is disheartening to buyers where the listing agent does not have a handle on the short sale process. The discovery process needs to be handled ahead of time to make the after offer time period one that buyers can deal with and still complete the process. The sellers are hurt instead of helped if their agent is not informed as to the time consuming process and that ends up making bad matters worse.  It seems like a third of the listings in our MLS are subject to bank approval and commissions as well.  

I hear so many different things about how to handle a short sale.  And we too have an MLS chock full of these things that when you call the agent they have no idea about much of anything.   I really don't see how the bank can approve all of the people in my area for short sales.  All these agents just seem to be telling their customers, oh, you're feeling a pinch? Let's do a short sale!   Isn't there supposed to be some sort of hardship involved?  Other than you just don't feel like paying for it?  

Things are complicated enough in the highly regulated real estate arena. I prefer to just work with regular, or normal sales, not short sales. Normal is the rule in my book.