by Sean Hess (www.SeanHess.com), Broker and Manager for St. Augustine Team Realty (www.StAugustineTeamRealty.com). Follow us on Facebook.
If you’ve been looking at the real estate print media lately you’ve seen a logo for something called a “CDPE” posted in some of the ads. It stands for “Certified Distressed Property Expert.”
In my opinion the CDPE is a completely bullsh*t designation. Here’s why:
It’s bad enough that so many sellers these days have been forced into short selling their home or even into forclosure, but what is even worse is the group of erstwhile agents who have no experience working a short sale or foreclosure having the gall to call themselves “distressed property experts” after attending a two-day training course in Jacksonville. These are incredibly complex transactions with a host of unwritten rules dealing with multiple lenders, courts, title companies, attorneys, sometimes bankruptcies…not to mention sellers and buyers with varying emotional investment and motivation. But most of all these are people’s homes that are on the line here, and it takes a lot of balls to put someone’s distressed property on your back when you don’t know what the hell you are doing.
I’m sure the seminar really was a wealth of good and factually correct information. I’m sure if you knew nothing about working a short sale it was a great way to give you an excellent overview of the process. But it does not make you an expert because it absolutely takes experience to make you an expert when it comes to short sales. Even if you acquired every back door telephone number to every bank negotiator from this seminar, you still need to know the protocol and procedure in dealing with these people, because you may only get one shot.
There are a lot of very good local Realtors who bought that CDPE designation and who do have actual experience working short sales…these people really are experts. But when you trot out another ridiculous designation how do you tell the real expert from the phony?
My partner Kate Stevens is a short sale expert, in fact she’s forgotten more than most people know about the process. While my other partner Ron and I are involved in the process and the outcomes of our short sales, we always defer to her judgment. Part of her experience is knowing what to handle herself and what to hand off to an attorney or paid negotiator. It’s also knowing who is effective at the current moment and who isn’t.
But talk is cheap: this link will take you to a list of the short sales and forclosures we’ve worked on, their status and their outcome…certainly more and better experience than a two-day seminar. It is our sincere hope that the economy and market improve to the point where we will never have to update that list ever again.
