Tips to make your Jacksonville Florida short sale go smoother: Gotta Pay the HOA!
If you’re facing a short sale situation, and you have either stopped making your payments, or you’re struggling to make your payments and may have to stop paying them in the future, if all possible make sure you continue to pay your HOA fees.
Here’s why: In Florida, if a house goes into foreclosure, and the house is in a neighborhood with an HOA, and those HOA fees have not been paid, the HOAs will still get some money. So what’s that got to do with a short sale you ask? Good question. Because of that law, it makes it harder to negotiate a past due amount with the HOA. They know they will get some money so some HOAs won’t budge and can kill the deal.
I recently ran into that situation with a successful short sale in St Johns County. The HOA fees were about $2500, due to being past due for a couple of years, lawn being mowed by the HOA, late fees, so on and so on. Luckily in this situation, the buyer paid the fees so the home closed and everyone was happy. Sometimes, the HOA will come down, but in this case and most others, they won’t.
The moral of the story is to pay your HOA fees if you can, or they can come back to haunt the short sale of your Jacksonville Florida Home!
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