Short sale real estate investing has gathered momentum over the past year due to the high number of homeowners defaulting on their mortgage payments. In such cases, you can pick up a property from the lender at a discounted rate if the homeowner is unable to meet the mortgage payments. These deals are quite different from your normal sale-purchase deals and hence you will need to build up the right contacts and sharpen your negotiation skills in order to succeed.

      Lenders are motivated into selling their property before it can reach the auctioneer's block since an auction would most probably result in the property being sold off at a very low rate. Thus, if you approach a homeowner who is in financial doldrums and wishes to exit the deal, which anyway he or she is unable to complete and impress upon him or her to sell the property, then you could pick up the property at a cheap rate. The real problem, however, is to convince the lender to part with the property at your rate.

You may have to approach the lender with your offer, which in all probability might not be initially accepted. Therefore, do not place your final offer on the table at the first instance itself. The lender could also call you again to renegotiate the rate. There could also be other potential buyers who might want the same property and chances are that they could be quoting higher rates in order to bag the deal. You will first need to calculate the market rate of the property by determining the ongoing rates in that neighborhood. You will then need to squeeze in your profit margin into the deal before placing your offer on the table.

One thing you ought to bear in mind is that most short sale homes may require some maintenance work since the homeowner may not have been in a position financially to maintain the property. This important factor should also be calculated in your purchase price or it could wipe out your profits. In some cases, the homeowner might have mortgages from two lenders and in such cases the lenders might be even more motivated since the second mortgage would anyway get wiped out if the property went to the foreclosure auction. The problem is that you will need to convince even more people to agree to your figures. This could make your deal even more challenging.

In order to lay your hands on such juicy deals, you will need an efficient network of people to inform you when homeowners have defaulted on more than 3 payments to their lender or are in the 2nd stage of the pre-foreclosure process. This is when the homeowner could be ready to sign over the deed that you will require to negotiate directly with the lender. This network could include reliable brokers, or lenders themselves. Make sure that you have a list of willing buyers to buy that property even before you buy it so that you do not end up in a quandary over a property that no one wants.

Short sale real estate investing could be the perfect boost to enter into this niche market where the profit margins are quite high. Polish up your negotiation skills and get a source to supply you with regular short sale properties to rotate your properties on a profitable basis.