Short Sales

Exploring the Surreal Reality of Short Sales: Homes Abandoned, Lives Interrupted

We’ve been inundated with news about foreclosures and short sales. I know you’re bored with it all.

Let me put it in perspective: my client and I walk up to the door of a cute little bungalow, painted yellow, in a moderately good part of town. I open the lockbox, put the key in the door and we casually walk into someone’s broken life.

The carpets are dirty and there are boxes lying all around the living room. The boxes are half full of various things, the pieces of someone’s life — a self-help book, a “Little Mermaid” DVD. The house smells terrible-like the rotting food we discover minutes later — left on the kitchen counter.

This is the surreal reality of a short sale — as if aliens abducted the residents of the house. They disappeared on a Tuesday at 2:14 p.m., leaving their half-eaten dinner.

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