Long Beach, California — Sponsored by several Bank-Owned Property Real Estate firms, the first annual No Paws Left Behind Casino Royale Night was held on April 15, 2010 at the Parker Palm Springs and raised nearly twenty thousand dollars to rescue pets abandoned by displaced homeowners.

The Casino Royale Night raised $18,388 through sponsorships and donations, which will support No Paws Left Behind’s pet rescue and housing initiatives for pets across the nation that have been abandoned by their owners during foreclosure. The No Paws Left Behind site also provides information on local animal shelters and other alternative housing providers based on ZIP code.

Cheryl Lang, founder of No Paws Left Behind, says, “We founded No Paws Left Behind to provide homeowners facing foreclosure with a solution, instead of leaving their pets to wander the streets or be euthanized. No Paws Left Behind may also provide monetary assistance for pet deposits required by new landlords.”

Mark Shandrow, owner of Shandrow Group and co?sponsor of the Casino Royale event, says, “We decided to become sponsors of the event because we’ve contacted No Paws Left Behind several times to come out and rescue the pets we find in locked and abandoned homes. These pets would be doomed if not for the kindness and caring of Cheryl and her organization.”

Homeowners entering the foreclosure process can visit the No Paws Left Behind website to locate no-kill animal shelters, temporary foster care and pet deposit assistance options before they are forced to relocate. No Paws Left Behind provides information for qualified animal shelters and foster care providers who are seeking financial assistance.

For more information about No Paws Left Behind, contact Cheryl Lang by visiting www.nopawsleftbehind.org

About Shandrow Group

Shandrow Group is a boutique real estate brokerage specializing in the management, marketing and sale of bank owned properties (REOs). The brokerage focuses on the sale of single-family homes, condos, and small multi-unit buildings. These are properties in various stages of disposition, from evictions to closings. For more information about Shandrow Group, please visit http://www.ShandrowGroup.com

About No Paws Left Behind

No Paws Left Behind, Inc. is a 501c3, not for profit organization dedicated to bringing awareness and finding solutions to the growing phenomena of foreclosure pets. This trend is increasing in numbers with no immediate end in sight and it is these helpless victims of the mortgage crisis that suffer in silence. For more information about No Paws Left Behind, please visit http://www.nopawsleftbehind.org

Fast Tube by Casper

Sincerely,

Mark Shandrow
Real Estate Broker
Shandrow Group
t 562-364-9505 ext 100
f 562-364-9506
mark@shandrowgroup.com

1. We’re a No-Hassle Turn-Key Solution. We take you from start to finish, no matter what type of property you’re in the market for. Our goal is to provide our clients with personalized, professional, honest hard work. We truly desire to match you with the property of your dreams, a solid investment for years to come. Click here to search our properties now.

2. Proven, Local Experience. Together, we have 40-plus years of combined successful experience in the Southern California real estate market. Our top-selling agents truly know how to get the job done in what is essentially our back yard. Click here to meet them all.

3. We Live Here. So we’re in touch with the local market better than anyone. We’re proud to say our children go to school right here and we do the majority of our personal and professional business in this community. It doesn’t get more local than that.

4. Incredible Property Selection. We have dozens of amazing properties to choose from, from traditional home sales to bank-owned foreclosures, from raw land to luxury homes to beachfront condos and everything in between. You name it, chances are we have it. If not, we’ll get it for you in short order.

5. VIP Access to the Latest Foreclosure Listings. Click here, sign up in seconds and we’ll send weekly hot foreclosure listings from Los Angeles and Orange Counties directly to your email inbox. It’s that easy! We receive nearly one foreclosed home to sell EACH AND EVERY DAY from our fast-growing list of local and national list of bank and financial institution clients. Shandrow Group’s foreclosure inventory is literally multiplying on a daily basis. As of this blog posting, we have more than 60 properties in various stages of sale from Pasadena to Foothill Ranch.

6. We Truly Understand the Local Investment Market. Several Shandrow Group Realtors own their own investment properties right here in Long Beach and in the outlying areas, and they’re happy to share their first-hand insider market expertise directly with you.

7 . Convenient Bixby Knolls Offices and around-the-clock availability. To better serve you, whenever you need us. Call us at 562.364.9505, ext. 800 or feel free to drop by our offices (located at 3970 Atlantic Ave. in Long Beach, CA 90807) today! Here’s a map.

8. Honest, Sincere Testimonials. Don’t take our word for it. Take a listen for yourself and find out what Shandrow Group clients are saying about us. Click here for a video or here for our latest written testimonial.

9. We Build Lasting Relationships. We’re more than just your neighborhood real estate agents. Our wealth of successful partnerships is backed by our uncompromising integrity, honesty and respect—100 percent of the time.

10. We Value Diversity and Culture. We’re an incredibly diverse team of young, extremely motivated and energetic Realtors and administrators. Together we represent all walks of Southern California lifestyles and cultures. Plus, most of us are bilingual, some of us from birth. The ever-increasing list of languages spoken fluenty by our agents includes: English, Spanish, Tagalog, Illicano and Khmer.

Each of us possesses an intimate knowledge of Greater Long Beach’s historic neighborhoods. More importantly, we maintain meaningful, real-life personal connections to many of the very residents and legislative leaders who bring our city’s rich, diverse cultural character and identity to life. We’re proud to be a part of Long Beach’s vast multicultural fabric.

The next time you’re in Bixby Knolls, please feel free to drop by and meet our talented team. We’d love to show you around our newly expanded offices.

Warm regards,

Mark Shandrow
Real Estate Broker
Shandrow Group Owner
562.364.9505, ext. 800

A state law halting home foreclosures for 90 days begins today, but companies can earn an exemption by showing they are already busy modifying loans.

The California Foreclosure Prevention Act, or Assembly Bill X2 7, which Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed in February, is meant to push banks and loan servicers into lowering mortgage payments of homeowners in financial trouble. It reflects a similar federal plan.

Several companies have already applied for exemptions, said Mark Leyes, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Corporations. The department must grant or refuse an exemption within 30 days, during which companies need not comply with the moratorium. The law impacts loans made from 2003 to 2007.

A lender or servicer gets an exemption by demonstrating it already has a loan modification program in place, including lowering owner payments to a target of 38 percent of their income going to housing. Methods of choice are lowering the loan’s interest rate or extending its term to 40 years.

The bill, however, seems to lack teeth. The 38 percent debt-to-income ratio is merely a target.

And the bill says it does not require a servicer to violate contracts for “investor-owned loans.” The most troubled loans are generally those investment banks packaged and sold, and if the servicing contract says foreclosure is preferable to a loan modification, nothing in the law stops foreclosure.

The law also says it does not require a bank to “provide a modification to a borrower who is not willing or able to pay under the modification.” I am not sure what “able to pay” means if the target debt-to-income ratio is 38 percent? Maybe if borrowers have to make other hefty payments — on cars, credit cards etc. — then they are out of luck.

• Read the full text of the bill, sponsored by Assemblyman Ted Lieu (D-Torrance), HERE

Best,

Mark Shandrow
Real Estate Broker
Shandrow Group
mark@shandrowgroup.com

Source: — Tom Petruno, Los Angeles Times

After every bear market on Wall Street, some investors are reluctant to buy because they believe many other investors will be anxious to sell into any rebound, swamping the market and stunting any recovery.

And yet, bull markets get going anyway.

Now the same issue is dogging the housing market.

A new Zillow.com survey of 1,266 homeowners nationwide asks, “If you saw signs of a real estate market turnaround in the next 12 months, how likely would you be to put your home up for sale?”

Twelve percent of homeowners said they’d be “very likely” to try to sell into an improving market, 8% said they’d be “likely” to do so and another 12% said they’d be “somewhat likely.”

Zillow refers to that total of 32% as the “shadow inventory” of homes.

“With almost a third of homeowners poised to jump into the market at the first sign of stabilization, this could create a steady stream of new inventory adding to already record-high inventory levels, thus keeping downward pressure on home prices,” said Stan Humphries, Zillow’s vice president of data and analytics.

By region, just 7% of survey respondents in the West said they were “very likely” to try to sell their homes into an improving market, compared with 10% for the South, 12% for the Midwest and 20% for the Northeast.

Despite the low number for the West, I’ve often wondered through this housing crash whether California would be particularly vulnerable to a supply overhang — in large part because of the number of aging California baby boomers whose retirement plan had consisted of eventually selling their home (at a big profit) and leaving for a lower-cost state.

For a summary of the Zillow survey, which also delves into home-price expectations and other market issues, go here. A link to the full report is here.

Read Mark Shandrow’s recent comments about the impending flood of Southern California shadow inventory expected to hit the market here, as told to a German TV reporter and camera crew on-set at the Shandrow Group offices in Long Beach.

We’re proud to announce that Shandrow Group will soon be making its European television debut in a German “60 Minutes”-style documentary on the booming California foreclosure market.

We were honored to have Munich-based FOCUS TV Produktions GmbH along for the ride for an entire day last week as editor Kirsten Moser and her camera crew shadowed Shandrow Group broker-owner Mark Shandrow while he went about his business day. The video shoot included visits to:

• Several bank-owned/REO properties currently under Shandrow Group asset management contracts
• A Shandrow Group-listed foreclosure duplex in Compton
• A single family residence foreclosure currently for sale by Shandrow Group in Long Beach’s historic Wrigley neighborhood
• An upscale lender-owned condominium in Manhattan Beach (which is now in ESCROW!) and several other exclusive Shandrow Group properties featured on our popular VIP Foreclosure List.

The 20-minute FOCUS TV California foreclosure market documentary segment also features a San Diego sheriff performing officer eviction lockouts and a work crew in Perris painting brown grass green, a common instant front yard “face lift” in a foreclosure-blighted neighborhood.

Mark expressed his experienced, informed perspective on what the future holds for the local and national foreclosure market on-camera, specifically regarding the American real estate industry’s emergent shadow inventory phenomenon.

He explained that approximately one-third of Southern California foreclosures are now in what’s called shadow or “limbo” territory. That is to say that they are not registering in county records as having been resold.

Banks throughout California and the rest of the country are “sitting on hundreds of thousands of foreclosed homes that they have not resold or listed for sale.” When those shadow inventory properties flood the market–and they will–home values will dramatically drop in response, Mark told German FOCUS TV reporters.

With so many bank repossession and default notices expected to explode onto the market in the coming weeks and months, Mark doesn’t foresee the foreclosures trend slowing down any time soon.

“This is just the beginning of the foreclosure market,” Mark commented. “Coupled with property depreciation in California, in the coming years, we can expect this situation to continue to greatly impact the domestic and global economies.”

“On a brighter note, we will eventually see the real estate market come back into balance,” Mark said. “However, it will definitely take plenty of time. Unfortunately, this is the way a free market works. The real estate market became incredibly inflated, and in turn inflated people’s expectations, and it just has to level out at some point.”

Munich-based Focus TV, a spin-off of the internationally read Focus Magazine,  is broadcast throughout Germany, Switzerland and Austria.

All of us at the Shandrow Group truly appreciated and enjoyed the up-close-and-personal opportunity to play a direct role in educating an international audience on the fast-paced, ever-evolving Los Angeles and Orange County area foreclosure climate, and, more specifically, Southern California’s unprecedented shadow inventory, which you’ll definitely be hearing about in the headlines very soon.

When we receive a video link to the segment, you’ll be the first to know!

As always, stay tuned for more exciting Shandrow Group development news.

To contact the Shandrow Group today, call 562.364.9505, ext. 800, or connect with one of our agents via our About Us page.

Press-Telegram Article Sunday, September23, 2007

Sincerely,

Mark Shandrow
Keller Williams Realty

Seller may face tax and credit troubles in a short sale

An owner can sell a house for less than its value and the lender can forgive the loss — but that’s not all.

By Diane Wedner
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 15, 2008

BUYERS AND sellers who choose the short-sale option need to understand the choppy waters they’re entering, lenders and agents say.

Buyers complain, justifiably, that the wait for bank approvals of short sales — typically 60 to 90 days, but sometimes considerably longer — seems endless and the transactions often fall apart.

Sellers, on the other hand, may face tax and credit problems.

Although sellers walk away from short sales without a dime from the transaction, they have, in a manner of speaking, “gained” by not fully paying off the loan. Where there are gains, the tax man is never far behind.

But the devil is in the details: If a bank accepts a lower payoff from the short sale of a principal residence, that debt relief may be considered income by the Internal Revenue Service, said Bill Ahern, a tax partner at Allen Matkins in Irvine.

Under federal legislation recently passed to help distressed sellers in this type of situation, however, certain owners may not be taxed on that debt relief. This legislation applies only to the debt that the homeowner acquired to buy or improve the property, Ahern said. It does not shield taxpayers from income derived from cash-out borrowings.

To avoid such legal action and to complete the short sale, some sellers take out a loan with their lenders — banks sometimes make it a condition of the sale — for a part of the amount the bank is owed. The terms often are excellent, including zero interest and 10-year amortization, lenders say.

Mark Shandrow, a Keller Williams Realty agent in Long Beach, is representing a seller with an outstanding home loan of $600,000. A buyer recently offered $430,000 for the home. The lender has agreed to the short sale, on the condition that the seller take an unsecured loan for $50,000 to offset part of the $170,000 the bank is forgiving.
“I think she’s going to do it,” Shandrow said. “If not, the bank could go after her for the other $170,000. This way, the deal is done. The bank won’t touch her.”

The credit fallout
But the credit bureaus will take note, and future lenders too. Although many sellers choose short sales instead of foreclosures because they think the credit fallout will be less, that’s a fallacy. The effect on their credit scores typically is just as negative, said Maxine Sweet, vice president of public education for Experian, a leading credit-reporting company.

Settled accounts, such as short sales, deeds in lieu of foreclosure (when the seller signs over the deed of trust to the bank) and foreclosures result in a “risky” rating on credit reports for seven years, Sweet said. That makes car and other credit purchases more difficult. Also, borrowers with a short sale or foreclosure on their records now have to wait five years, instead of four, to get a Fannie Mae-backed loan. The increase went into effect June 1. The wait for Federal Housing Administration loans is three years.

A possible silver lining is that mortgage lenders sometimes include factors other than credit scoring to determine whether to approve a loan, such as a borrower’s assets and investments and the fact that the borrower didn’t walk away from the home. But those factors count only when a lender manually reviews an application, experts say. Most are not going the time-consuming manual-application route these days, however.

So why not just let the bank foreclose on a property and avoid the hassles of a short sale?

“With a short sale, owners can end the bad nightmare . . . and move on,” Sweet said. “They’ll have problems getting another loan for a while, but it’s better than a foreclosure, where they risk an eviction.”
A better alternative to a short sale or a foreclosure, lenders say, is a “loan modification,” which sometimes allows owners to stay in their homes.

Result: affordable
Here’s how it works: When monthly payments become unaffordable, the bank reviews the owner’s income, expenses and other variables, then offers to lower the interest rate and extend the term of the loan. The end result is a monthly payment the owner can afford, according to a loss-mitigation- department spokesman at GMAC Mortgage.

Sherri Frost, a senior loan officer with Metrocities Mortgage, represents a seller whose monthly mortgage payment on a $525,000 loan was $3,000. With his loan modification, he’s now paying 2% fixed interest for two years, then 4% for the following two years and a bit over 5% for the five years after that. His monthly payment is $1,700 for the first two years. “He can swing that,” she said.

Call or email me directly with any questions.

Mark Shandrow
Keller Williams Realty

From the Los Angeles Times:

Short sales: A tough road

As an alternative to foreclosures, short sales are on the rise, but they can test the patience of all involved: sellers, buyers, banks.

By Diane Wedner
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 15, 2008

RESIDENTIAL short sales sound like a picnic: Owners need to sell their homes for less than they owe, lenders forgive the difference and buyers grab a good deal.
If only. This is one picnic that requires a long wait for dessert. The only “short” thing about short sales, buyers and sellers say, is one’s patience.  “The waiting is torture,” said Mark Shandrow, a Keller Williams Realty agent in Long Beach who specializes in such transactions. “The banks are overwhelmed with short-sale requests, and some make sellers wait five months for an answer.” That answer, in many cases, he added, is “no.”

Yet despite the obstacles to successful short sales — lenders holding the first and second mortgages don’t agree on the terms, buyers often ditch the deal midstream or banks nix the agreement just before escrow closes — they’re on the rise. Countrywide Financial Corp. of Calabasas, the largest U.S. home lender, reports a nearly 60% increase in those transactions nationwide in April, the latest month for which statistics are available, from the same period a year earlier.

In the Santa Clarita and San Fernando valleys, the number of short sales increased from at least 31 sales from May 2006 to May 2007 to at least 1,956 sales from May 2007 to May of this year, according to the Southland Regional Assn. of Realtors.

The reason for the rise, experts say, is that as more financially strapped homeowners fall behind on their mortgage payments — and see their homes’ values plummet to less than what they owe — they’re turning to short sales as an alternative to foreclosure. Banks, once loath to take on short sales because, among other reasons, they were understaffed for the application onslaught, are tackling them now mainly because they’re more cost-effective than foreclosures.

“Banks aren’t happy about short sales,” said Sherri Frost, a senior loan officer with Sherman Oaks-based Metrocities Mortgage, “but they have few options.”

Unlike a foreclosure, in which the lender takes ownership of a property after a borrower misses several payments, a short sale is a transaction in which the owners, not the bank, sell the home; they receive no proceeds from the sale. In a foreclosure, the defaulting owner may receive sales proceeds once the lender has been paid, if the amount exceeds that of the outstanding loan.

If a short-sale borrower owes $500,000 on a home, the bank may accept a payoff amount of $450,000, the amount a buyer has offered to pay. The sellers need not be in default — meaning they stopped making mortgage payments — in order for a lender to consider a short sale, but they must be able to show a real hardship to receive the debt forgiveness, which may have tax consequences.

Then there’s the wait
It sounds straightforward, but the short-sale road is a long one. Once sellers have an offer, they must assemble a package to present to the bank, including a “hardship letter” explaining why they had to put the house up for sale — loss of employment, a spousal death, a divorce, a disability or a mortgage resetting, for example — and asking the bank to accept a short sale, according to a Countrywide spokeswoman.

The sellers also must provide income verification, their most recent bank and income-tax statements, the listing history of the house and other documentation. Then comes the wait. And frequent follow-up calls to the bank to make sure the file isn’t buried.

“Banks won’t grant face-to-face interviews because of the volume of short sales and foreclosures,” said Mary Ebersole, a Re/Max Realty Specialists agent in Long Beach. Even if the seller gets approval, she added, “there’s only room for cautious optimism.”

That’s because impatient buyers sometimes head elsewhere while the bank’s loss-mitigation officer, or negotiator, sifts through the pile of short-sale packages. Or buyers put offers on five or six other properties to see which comes through first.

Sometimes, while awaiting a bank’s decision, interest rates go up and buyers no longer qualify for a previously approved loan because their lock-in rates expired. Worse yet, a seller may get an initial approval from the bank, but in the eleventh hour the bank adds a contingency that skewers the deal, or pulls the plug without explanation, agents say.

Second and third mortgages and even home equity loans can further complicate matters. Last fall, Pam Kennedy, a Coldwell Banker Ambassador agent in Whittier, was disheartened when her short-sale client’s lender demanded, after a long wait and with a buyer already on board, that the seller sign a promissory note for $15,000, which would be interest-free and amortized over 10 years. The seller had taken out a second mortgage awhile back to buy a recreational vehicle for $25,000 and pay off some debt. The lender wanted to recoup some of the loss it was absorbing.

The seller was going through a divorce, starting a new job and was afraid she couldn’t make the payments. Also, despite months of effort, she couldn’t sell the RV — an asset, in the bank’s opinion. The deal fell through and the bank foreclosed on the property. The experience left a bitter taste in Kennedy’s mouth.

“I avoid short sales and advise buyers to avoid them,” Kennedy said. “They are miserable.”

Sticking it out
True, most participants say, but some eventually have happy endings.
Mari and Joe Abrams found the house of their dreams in Porter Ranch in December. They got quick loan approval to buy the four-bedroom, three-bathroom home, and feeling optimistic about the new purchase, they put their Encino home on the market.

The couple offered $650,000 for the new house, which had been listed earlier in the $699,000 to $749,000 range. They paid a $10,000 good-faith deposit, agreed to pay all of the escrow fees (which usually are split between seller and buyer) and agreed to buy the property as is.
They expected the bank to quickly counter-offer. For one thing, the seller’s second-mortgage holder already had agreed to the sale, a major hurdle in short-sale transactions. But without the first bank’s approval, the deal stalled. (Both the first and second mortgage holders must settle to complete a short sale.)

The couple’s own house sold three months into the process, so they moved, with their toddler, Daniel, and 50-pound dog into Mari’s mother’s condo.

By April, Mari, 32, started peppering the first lender with daily phone calls, seeking a response to their offer. As the deal dragged, the Abramses extended the escrow. It closed, finally, on May 2. The family plans to move in later this month.

“Our hearts sank a hundred times,” Mari said. “It was a roller coaster.”
“If we didn’t like the house so much, we wouldn’t have hung on that long,” Joe, 37, added. In the end, however, they’re glad they stuck it out. It is, Mari says, just what they wanted. Even if they didn’t get the “deal of the century,” Joe said.

Bargain bins
Lenders will not accept short-sale offers that are far below market value. To the contrary, many banks “net about 90% of the current market value” on many of these sales, agent Shandrow said. Also, the homes usually are sold as is, which sometimes can mean a missing kitchen sink, ripped-out bathroom fixtures and stained carpets.

Marty Rodriguez, a Century 21 agent in Glendora, says she won’t take a short-sale offer to the bank unless it’s reasonable. “The negotiator doesn’t want to look at 12 offers,” Rodriguez said. “He wants the best, highest and the most qualified ones.”

Buyers looking for bargains should wait until short-sale and foreclosure prices are down about 35% from the peak market in their search area, said James Joseph, owner of Century 21 Ambassador in Brea and Whittier.

“Short sales and foreclosures are the nails in the floor of the market,” Joseph said. “That’s where the bargains are.”

Click here to see the full article titled Short sales: A tough road.

Call or email me directly with any questions.

Mark Shandrow
Keller Williams Realty