Short sale listings are bogus
I wrote about the difficulty (or practical impossibility) of buying a short sale in this post. My friend, Larry Cragun recently posted a comment from Thomas Johnson, a realtor in Houston TX, relating a story of how the banks do not respond to short sale contracts and why. Click here to find out why short sale listings are bogus and why.
Don't waste your time chasing short sales, there are lots of very nice Charleston homes for sale that can be purchased advantageously and the transaction can actually close. In a short sale, the seller can actually ratify the contract but the bank must still approve the sale. Don't count on step 2.
Foreclosures are another story, in the case of a foreclosure, the bank actually owns the property and they are the seller so you can expect to close.