I just helped a family buy this two-year old home recently on a short sale.  They paid $177,500 for a home that was comparably valued at $210,000. 

This home was located in a great school district with very desirable elementary and middle schools.  The community has a pool and play ground as well.  The home was situated on a premium corner lot, too.  All in all, the features on the home were outstanding, with Corian counter tops, raised cabinets, black appliances, 20" ceramic tile, gourmet kitchen with an island and built in desk and much, much more. 

 The prior owners had divorced and they couldn't afford to keep the home, so to avoid an imminent foreclosure their Realtor was offering the property as a short sale.

I located this home on the MLS using special techniques I have developed to find short sale properties.  The general public does not have access to the information I can review, so special values like this are not available to the general public on ANY real estate website.  The MLS service in North Texas (NTREIS) does not feed this information to real estate websites such as REALTOR.COM, and not many Realtors know how to find these  special properties for their clients.  These properties cannot be found on the typical brokerage websites, because the same data is fed to them by NTREIS that goes to REALTOR.COM.

Finding this home was a small part of the story, because most of my time was spent when I took over the negotiations with the primary mortgage lender and another creditor who surfaced just before my clients closed on the property.  Usually these matters are negotiated by the listing agent, but because I had more experience with short sales, she asked me to deal with the creditors on the property and negotiate the settlement for her. 

My clients had to be very patient because finding this home took some time, and we viewed about 15 other homes before deciding on this property.  Once we had a contract, it took 51 days to close, which is a little longer than most home sales.  The negotiations with the bank were cumbersome because it would take a week sometimes to get a response to an offer or counteroffer to the bank. 

The community where the home is located in is in high demand and new homes are selling for much more that this two-year old home sold for.  There were not any foreclosures for sale in the neighborhood and this property was the only one offered as a short sale.   When looking at the comparable values for other homes in the neighborhood, a similar home was offered at $210,000, or over $68 per square foot.  My clients purchased their home for $10 less per square foot!  My clients will have a problem getting the Tarrant Central Appraisal District to lower their appraisal from $205,000, but with my help, my clients can protest the valuation next year using their copy of the appraisal used to purchase their home.

When I was originally engaged by my clients, they asked me to find a home for them where they would have equity after their purchase.  When they closed on this property, their equity was over $30,000, and they are very, very happy!