Short Sale Investing Tip 2: Work With Right Agent

Tip 2: Work With an Agent Who Understands Short Sales

Once you are ready to shop for a short sale investment, be sure you work with an agent who's both competent and who has true experience successfully closing short sell properties. Don't assume that you can work with just anyone.

I mentioned earlier in this little e-book that short sale transactions represent only a slice of real estate transactions. So many agents aren't getting short sale experience. Further, most short sales according to anecdotal evidence (just Google on this) fail. Accordingly, you really must work with someone who knows what they're doing-and will guide you through the process.

If you can't work with someone who is short sale competent, you may need to abandon this idea.

Tip: If you're planning to invest in two or three short sale properties-and especially if you already have funding lined up-I would be sure that prospective real estate agents and brokers you're considering working with know this. Short sale transactions are a bunch more work and headache for the agent. You'll make yourself a more desirable client if you're planning , for example, to do two or three deals.

One final comment: The first short sale transaction that I attempted failed, largely due to the incompetence of the real estate agent I tried to use to accomplish the transaction. The agent simply didn't understand how the process worked-and as a result the agent did certain things that sabotaged the process. And then the agent didn't do other things that would have made the process successful.

Next Section: Tip 3: Mine Zillow and Similar Sites for Data

Additional Information for Shortsale Investors

If you want additional information about how tax laws work for a short sale investment or for an individual running a business based on short sale investing, you may also be interested in one of my downloadable e-books shown below:

Tax laws provide active real estate investors with giant tax planning loopholes. A little upfront planning on your part could save you thousands a year...

One of the most powerful tactics for saving small business taxes is maximizing your deductions. You can literally save thousands in taxes each year.

Using an S corp for your real estate investing? To maximize savings, you need to minimize the salary paid to shareholders. But this decision is tricky.