Is this guy an expert?

What does it mean to be a short sale expert? I see that phrase everywhere these days and I have to say, 9 out of 10 people using it don’t realize just how much of a short sale expert they are not.

But its not their fault, these individuals have taken some classes and closed some short sales and they certainly know a lot more about short sales than average agents. I like them, consider some friends, and would much rather have one of them as the co-operating agent in a short sale transaction.

So why aren’t they experts? Truthfully, because no one is. What is there to be an expert on? What expertise can a short sale specialist have in a system that lacks structure, consistency, or even common sense. You may see web pages at this site which speak of our expertise and 14 years experience but honestly, if i had taken the last year off, none of that would matter. The banks change policies daily and someone who was a Charlotte short sale expert, but then took even 6 months off, would be completely clueless today.

From what I can tell, the things which makes us real experts today, are volume and resources. Because if an agent or organization isn’t working on a minimum of 6-10 short sale transactions PER BANK, then there is no way to have the scope or reference needed to understand exactly what is happening at that particular bank. And as for resources, this job just isn’t possible without at least one full time staff facilitator. I say “staff” because i am seeing the emergence of attorney short sale facilitation and while on the surface, this seems appealing, there is much not being considered with that model. I’ll get into that later.

So what is a short sale expert? I believe the true definition, at least until things stabilize and the banks figure out what they are going to do – is someone who has enough current and applicable experience to see the changes instantly and the resources to adapt our own procedures immediately as well. Because the difference between an expert and a novice, the reason we search out experts in the first place, is competence. That’s what we’re searching for – success. And as crazy as everything is, it is impossible to be truly competent, to be a short sale expert, unless you actually know what is going on and you’re dealing with it every single day on literally a mass scale. Choose anything less and you may get a friend, a traditional helping hand to make you feel good and offer personal service, you may even get a person who is knowledgeable regarding the facts of the short sale process, but your chances of success(statistically) would be much, much lower.

So am I an expert? Obviously, this all seems like an apparent suggesstion that, since I’m the state’s leader in agent short sale volume, that only this level of production can make someone an expert. And in a way, yeah…I am. :–) But not completely, because I do this enough to recognize that I don’t know everything and that I am far from being perfect myself. I don’t know if I’m an expert, at least not in the general sense of the word anyway. If you could rate expertise on a curve then yeah, sure I am. But as I said above, short sales are crazy, ever changing beasts and I just do my best to help my clients avoid being eaten alive. And with overall success rates over 80%, foreclosure avoidance much higher, I’d like to think we’re doing a pretty good job. Maybe even at an expert level?