MARS Rules Affects ALL Short Sale Transactions

Arizona Real Estate Blog

by Jon Kichen

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MARS Rules Affects ALL Short Sale Transactions

April 12th, 2011 at 11:36 am star

MARS Rules and the Realtor

This should not be any news to you that both the Federal government and the Arizona Department of Real Estate have established rules, guidelines and disclosures that licensed agents must follow when listing a short sale property. These rules are confusing, challenging and oppressive, yet, as licensees, we must follow them.

My only advice here is that as a licensee, if you have a listing right now that is a short sale, or if you believe that anytime in the future you might list a short sale, you must, and I repeat MUST, know the rules, guidelines and disclosures that are needed before you go forward.

One source right now is The Arizona Association of Realtors website, www.aaronline.com and more specifically, at this link…

http://www.aaronline.com/AZR/2011/March/mars-rule-requirements-for-short-sale-brokers.aspx

There you will find the rules and guidelines, as well as suggested disclosure forms for you to use. Until your broker provides specific and detailed information, I suggest that you print Michelle Lind's article regarding MARS and the disclosures that follow it.

Once your review all of that, you might question yourself as to why in the world would you want to assist the seller in negotiating a short sale.

The back-story here is that the Feds and ADRE really want us out of the short sale negotiation business, so they have imposed some extremely burdensome rules to affect that end result.

These rules will constantly be revised so your best source for information is AAR and/or your broker.

Don't ignore this! Our industry is being watched by several agencies and they are itching for a test case of an agent assisting in the short sale and not following the rules and disclosure obligation. Don't be that test case…