Todd: Hello and welcome to Todd Miller TV. Joined today here w3ith Ryan Alexander Las Vegas Attorney and Harvard Law graduate. Wanna talk about Short sales.

Ryan: Okay.

Todd: Sp there’s a lot of Law firms now doing short sales.

Ryan: Correct. Yeah.

Todd: So, we’re gonna talk about maybe the benefits potentially  to a person to use a Law firm. First is “not”, ;and then the benefits of using a real estate agent. And just kinda talk about those a little bit. So, what are some of the benefit/why would somebody/okay, you have 2 people, you have a Law firm, we’ll just call it XYZ Law firm, and then you have a Real estate whose done for 5 years that’s all they’ve done, the short sales, let’s just say, right?

Ryan: Yeah!

Todd: So, what would be a benefit using a Law firm?

Ryan: Well, I would think that the benefit to using a Law firm to do a short sale would be in a situation where you intend to do the short sale process as a stall tactic and then do some sort of litigation involving the title of your property. So if you intend to ultimately litigate the property, then you might wanna try and see if you can short sale with an attorney. Other than that though, there’s really no process that the attorney that the realtor can’t do. And when I refer people out for short sales, what I look in for out of a short sale provider is experience but also dedicated staff to process the short sale, There’s a lot of paperwork involved and what I’m looking for as the attorney is someone say “Okay. I know that they have enough people. I know that have enough experience. And I know that they have the satisfied client base” The risk of the attorney doing the short sale is if they’re just adding that on in to another practice in the debt relief field, is determining “Okay, are they really prepared to do that?, Are they really prepared to handle those type of cases?”

Todd: Okay!

Ryan: But I don’t think that there’s any requirement to need an attorney for the short sale because the realtor calls up and gets the same paperwork done.

Todd: Alright. So do you think that/So like, and example would be: we’re doing a short sale in our office, we get the lather at the end that says this is potential, and sometimes is says nothing, it’s like total forgiveness, everything’s good, but sometimes there’s promissory notes, there’s some terms that comes with it. So wend send them over to like an attorney like yourself, you sit down and go through what the potential, good or bad, or indifferent, right? Do you think that there’s a conflict of interest at all with the same person saying: “you should do a short sale and them when the letter comes in in the end, the demand statement or whatever letter saying, Oh yeah, you should definitely, this is not that bad or whatever.” Like..

Ryan: I don’t see an obvious conflict of interest, but that attorney is still gonna have to tell you “This is our opinion of it, we’re processing the transaction” So if you’re gonna commit to the contract they might say “Okay, well you should/you could have a third party look at it”. You know, because a lot of attorneys will review the contract for the realtor firm who’s doing the transaction. But if it’s the attorney who’s doing the transaction, and interpreting the contract, there wouldn’t be a probation against interpreting the contract. But if your in a business/If you have business interest in the transaction, it would be prudent for the attorneys disclaimer to say “you might wanna talk to a third party who’s not economically interested in the transaction for approval”.

Todd: Okay.

Ryan: That would be the only feedback I would have on that.

Todd: So bottomline is really, whoever who has the experience, whoever who has the staff who’s done that before and probably I would say Track Record, or someone with a track record.

Ryan: Correct. Well, in moral listings. You wanna look for someone who’s got listings already out there, and is processing homes on a regular basis, and if I was a buyer or a seller I would be looking for someone who’s got properties listed, their advertising in the regular places where realtors advertise for buyers and seller of homes. Because I wanna make sure as a seller, my home gets to people who are looking for homes.

Todd: Right.

Ryan: And that’s another thing that if they’re just starting up a new practice as a law firm, they won’t have that background or that basis to have a client base and have an advertising base for homes!

Todd: Right. Yeah, you know it’s funny ’cause some of the local law firms that are doing that, have actually higher real estate agents. ’cause I see now that like the broker of the company will be an agent who I/like somebody I know, that is now working as a broker for the law firm on the real estate side. So that the principles in law firm don’t really have to get license, just the broker technically gets license. So, and they can/it’s really still the real estate team doing it; they’re just doing it with a label on it “This is Law firm”.

Ryan: And I can see that for the lawyer’s point of view if I was gonna say “Well let’s open a Real estate branch” and I don’t have any Real estate experience. What the easiest way is you could just buy someone out or make them a business offer to basically absorb their Realty practice.

Todd: Right.

Ryan: And then you’re really just getting the realty practice, you’re not getting the law firm, you’re getting the realty practice that underway.

Todd: Well, but you know I think what you’re buying is the perception of it’s got “Law firm” on it now. Which is really what it is. It’s “oh! it’s a law firm doing short sales” when you’re/it’s a real estate company that use the marketing of a law firm.

Ryan: But unless you intend to go litigate that, like you’re gonna go to court afterwards with the lawyer, the lawyer really doesn’t really add to that transaction. Unless you have some sort of sense of mind because you trust lawyers more than realtors, I think most studies shows that the consumer confidence is the other way around.

Todd: it’s tough. Car sales. Car sales went in there somewhere.

Ryan: But unless you intend to go to court afterwards the lawyer doesn’t add any value to the transaction, as far as I can see.

Todd: Okay! Perfect! Alright, well that was the update, I just wanted to engage attorneys in short sales and all that. Ans so, thanks for tuning in. Thanks for being on video with me and hope to see you on another video. Thanks.