How To Get A Citimortgage Short Sale Approved

More likely than not, you may be wondering how to get a Citimortgage short sale approved.  To many, a short sale can be frightening, but if you have a veteran Realtor behind you it does not have to be.  This person will be the eyes and ears for both you and the bank, which is what you want.

All three of you need to approach a short sale with the mind frame of getting as much money back to the bank as possible.  This in turn will lead to less stress on you, the homeowner.  However, and I cannot stress this enough, finding a veteran Realtor who has a history of getting short sales approved is a vital key to make this process go much smoother.

Citimortgage is one of two very prominent banks, the other being Bank of America, and it handles more loans than they have in house.  They follow specific procedures when it comes to proceeding with a Citimortgage short sale.  The first important guideline is you have to have a severe hardship.  You have to be very specific with what is happening financially that pertains to your short sale.


The best option you have is when submitting in your hardship letter write it out yourself, and make it as authentic as possible as well as expressing it as best as you can.  This approach can be used for many banks, but Citi in particular.

The second important guideline you should know is that Citi does not handle most of the decision making.  The negotiators, or the Loss Litigation Department, do not really have all that much authority to move things around or to grant extensions as you would think.

Something else people ask is, is there a formula to figure out how much the bank will approve for a short sale?  The answer is yes, but how much is owed on the property is not where it starts; it is the property’s current market value.

Many banks are willing to get within 10% of the appraisal value if under 200,000 and between 5%-8% for higher appraisals, in addition to 10% for misc. fees that can include the title and Realtors fees.  You can take the BPO, or appraisal, and deduct 15%-18% of that  to estimate how much the bank is will to take for your property  The Realtor needs to be willing to work extra hard in the beginning to come up with an offer as close to the appraisal as possible.  To do so, he/she may obtain their own BPO and pay another Realtor for a BPO that way you can present the bank with all of these documents when starting the process.

For all of these reasons and more is why having an experienced Realtor standing beside you through this process is vital.  It is that experience  that you want that will get you as close to an approved short sale as possible, especially when dealing with a Citimortgage short sale.