Can I Sell My House to Avoid Foreclosure?

 

Can you sell your house when you’re going through foreclosure? That’s a question that we get from a lot of different sellers.

Hey guys, this is Eric Sztanyo from WeBuyNKYHouses.com, and I am here today on the west side of Cincinnati in Delhi, at a house that actually I’m about to list for the sellers. We’re getting photos today, I’m here dropping off my sign, and putting a lockbox on the house.

You might think, “Well that’s weird, aren’t you a cash buyer?” Yes, I am a direct cash home buyer in the Cincinnati, northern Kentucky area. But, I am also a realtor with Keller Williams.

As we just talked about in another video, sometimes the best choice for a seller, especially if the home is in pretty good shape, is not to do a cash offer when you’ve got a little time, but instead, to put the home on the market.

Now, in this case, this is a nice home. This is a nice four bedroom home with a finished basement, and there’s several good comps around the area. Once I ran through the numbers with the sellers, it made a lot of sense for them to put it on the market, as opposed to the cash offer that we were to give them. Now, that’s not always the case, but in this situation it was.

But, the question of the video is, what if you’re going through a foreclosure? Now, this is a tough situation. You’re behind in payments with the bank, and a lot of questions are raised about the foreclosure process. How long does that take, and what would the bank prefer?

What most people don’t know is that when you’re in the pre-foreclosure process, when you’re behind on some payments, a lot of times it’s actually better to reach out to the bank and let them know. Most people, you might have some thoughts about TV or movie, where banks are coming in, they’re ready to foreclose on you, and they want to get the house right away. That’s not always the case, because the truth is foreclosure is timely, or time consuming. And, very costly for a bank to go through that entire process with you.

The bank would much rather you do a couple things before going through the foreclosure process. One, they like to see you actually sell the house yourself, that’s the easiest thing for them. And, the second thing might be for you to do a short sale, which is where you’re working with them to get the home sold for a certain price that they would accept to pay off the mortgage.

In this scenario where we’re at with the sellers is that, putting the house on the market, and getting it sold for them so that they can get the mortgage paid off and move on to the next area of life is the best case by far.

Now, they’re behind on a few payments, and there’s not an endless amount of time. But, we had them reach out to the bank and the bank said, “Hey, you’ve got through November.” We are in early September here right now, and we’re going to get this home sold for them. We got a good price on it, and it should be going active in the next few days here in White Oak.

The question … (Sorry for all the cars running by here), we’re on Jessup Road here in White Oak, in Cincinnati. But, the question is can I sell my home when I’m going through the foreclosure process? The answer is absolutely yes!

What we would recommend is to reach out to your bank, and also reach out to a realtor, or a cash home buyer like us. We’re going to give you different options, different scenarios. On the cash offer side, the nice thing about that is we can close right away, we can give you a cash offer, and you can close in probably about two weeks, maybe even less. Especially if there’s no title issues, and we can get going right away on that.

Then, the other thing is if you want to try to make a little bit more money with the house, then you can get the house ready, clean it up, maybe even put some new paint on it. Do a little landscaping, and see if you can get the most amount of money for it by putting it on the market. We can help you that way as well, because like I said, I’m a realtor with Keller Williams.

So, you can go either direction, whatever is best for you. We always put out the numbers for our sellers and say, “Hey, what’s in your best interest?” We want to help you either way. You’ve got a problem, you need to get the house sold, we’re going to help you do that no matter which way is best for you.

Again, this is Eric Sztanyo with WeBuyNKYHouses.com. I’m also Eric Sztanyo with Team Sztanyo and Keller Williams Realty, and we can help you out either way. We’re going to get this home sold for these sellers so they can move on, and get this foreclosure off of their back. All right guys, thanks so much for watching. We’ll see you next time.