PROFESSIONAL NEGOTIATORS- HELP or HYPE?

There is a growing trend of Realtors in our area that are farming their short sale listings out to “professional negotiators”. While this may sound like something incredibly special, it is usually nothing more than another agent who gets a cut of the commission for doing the day-to-day leg work associated with negotiating the sale. Your agent will just take the listing, plop a sign in the yard, and wait for the commission check. It's a numbers game for them, and your number is never #1(and often you're treated like #2!)

My experience has been that this does not close the deal any faster. On the contrary, it just adds another layer to an already complicated transaction, and in some cases, it can actually gum up the works. Instead of your transaction file going directly to the bottom of the pile of the bank negotiator's in-box, it first goes to the bottom of the professional negotiator's in-box.

Let's do the math: A typical negotiator gets around $1000 for each closed transaction. To bring in $50K a year, they need to successfully close 50 transactions. Giving every benefit of the doubt, let's say the negotiator closes 50% of transactions handled (that's being very generous, most agents put the number at less than 20%). That means that in order to make a half decent living, the professional negotiator deals with 100 files a year with the average short sale taking about 5 months to close. How much TLC do you think your deal is getting?

For the record, I personally negotiate all of my short sale transactions and enjoy a batting average of over .900 when it comes to getting the deal done. I have found that the "handmade" approach to dealing with the lenders works much better than the "mass production" method. People are people (yes, even at the bank), and you just can't employ the human touch when you're juggling 40-50 files at a time.

Copyright © 2009 Christopher R. Prickett.
All rights reserved worldwide