David Barr's Sarasota and Venice Real Estate Blog

More and more, I believe the answer is NO. If you are considering a short sale, you are likely already in financial stress.  You don't have to pay money to a title company or real estate attorney to handle your short sale for you. The short sale negotiation industry grew out of the need for real estate title companies and attorneys to increase their income as a result of the real estate downturn.  Sharply reduced sales meant sharply reduced revenue.  To make up for this, title companies and real estate attorneys marketed their services to homeowners and real estate agents. The services were marketed to include the mundane tasks most real estate agents can't or won't undertake, including collecting the seller's financial information, disclosures, and keeping constant contact (supposedly daily) with the seller's lender to push the transaction to the head of the line with the lender, who is likely overwhelmed with the volume of short sales and foreclosures. The

I've been showing a lot of properties to buyers this summer.  This is not an easy job, as it requires logistics, market knowledge, and planning, to satisfy the needs of your buyer and maximize the use of their time. There's one company, Centralized Showings, that makes this job even more difficult.  As a real estate agent, we are required to use so many passwords and security codes to log in to MLS, retrieve phone messages, emails, etc, that another code to remember is unnecessary and not customer focused. So why is Centralized Showings making us provide a "showing code" when we call to schedule an appointment?  Shouldn't they be able to look us up in their system, ask us for a license number (we all should know ours by heart), or something just a little more user friendly than making us jump through their hoop?  It's really to the point where if I have multiple options and limited time with a buyer, I will not show a property if I have to call Centralized