Be the Solution with Maria Quattrone

When to Call the Short Sale Expert: Insights from Matt Merenoff

• Maria Quattrone • Season 1 • Episode 332

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Uncovering the truth about today's real estate market reveals a surprising reality: short sales didn't disappear after COVID - they're hiding in plain sight. Matthew Marinoff of Real Estate Recovery Group returns to the Be the Solution podcast to shatter common misconceptions and expose the current landscape of distressed properties.

Drawing on two decades of expertise, Matt explains how the "COVID era" created a perfect storm of financial vulnerability. Homeowners who exhausted loan modifications, accumulated partial claims, or overpaid during bidding wars now face a harsh awakening. Most striking is his revelation about properties from Texas where buyers overextended by $50,000-$80,000 above market value - a recipe for financial disaster when life changes force a move.

The conversation takes a deep dive into the foreclosure timeline, revealing the critical window when intervention matters most. Matt's candid approach cuts through the shame that often paralyzes homeowners: "You can lie to everybody else, you can lie to your spouse, you can lie to your side piece, but you have to tell me the absolute truth." This raw honesty highlights why transparency becomes the lifeline for those drowning in financial quicksand.

For real estate professionals, Matt offers practical guidance on when to engage a short sale expert (immediately), how to recognize distress signals beyond what clients initially share, and the crucial role of title searches as financial "EKGs" revealing hidden judgments and liens. His newly launched educational portal at YourShortSaleSuccess.com provides on-demand training for navigating these complex situations.

This episode serves as both warning and roadmap for anyone connected to today's real estate market. The best preparation for tomorrow truly is understanding the hidden currents of distress beneath today's seemingly stable market surface.

Ready to help clients avoid foreclosure fallout or expand your expertise in distressed properties? Visit YourShortSaleSuccess.com to access Matt's comprehensive training resources.

Connect with Maria Quattrone:
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Facebook Page: REMAX at Home Facebook
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LinkedIn: Maria Quattrone
YouTube: Maria Quattrone
Instagram: @maria_quattrone
TikTok: mariaquattronerealestate
Website: MQrealesate.com
Office number: 215- 607-3535

Maria Quattrone:

This is the Be the Solution podcast and I am Maria Quattrone, your host Today. I'm super excited to bring back a friend of the Be the Solution podcast and a colleague, Matthew Merenoff, with Real Estate Recovery Group. Welcome, Matthew.

Matt Merenoff:

Thanks for having me back.

Maria Quattrone:

I'm excited to talk to you, so I have a quote specifically for you today. Here's the quote you ready.

Matt Merenoff:

I'm ready.

Maria Quattrone:

The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today.

Matt Merenoff:

I like that.

Maria Quattrone:

The best preparation for tomorrow, doing your best today unfortunately, most people don't do that well, we, we're, we do, and we're going to talk to others today about how they can do that too, but being prepared, absolutely so. The reason why I chose that quote today for you is about being prepared, and, as a real estate professional, being prepared means understanding what's happening in the market, understanding the tools that are available in the marketplace, for example, short sales. Short sales have not been as many as they have in the past, but they still exist.

Matt Merenoff:

What browser are you on? What browser are you on? What browser are you on?

Maria Quattrone:

Chrome.

Matt Merenoff:

Are you on Chrome? I just switched to a different browser. I guess I'm on Chrome now.

Maria Quattrone:

So Chrome is the right browser.

Matt Merenoff:

I'm so sorry about that.

Maria Quattrone:

Okay. So Apple, take the beginning and cut that, and then we're going to start starting from here. So short sales are something, matt, that we haven't seen that many of them in the last several years, at least on our side over here. Right, short sales, how it works. When should agents get involved? What's going on with them right now? So let's start with that. What is going on with the short sales? First of all, are you seeing more of them?

Matt Merenoff:

I am seeing a lot more of them I've been doing this for 20 years of them. You know, I've been doing this for 20 years and I think there was a huge awakening during the COVID era that's what we're going to call it now where people weren't paying their mortgages over that time span, and some of the people that are getting caught and having to sell their property short now are people that might have exhausted all their loan modification options prior to COVID. They might have partial claims against the property, not explaining to the bank correctly what had happened during that time frame. On top of the properties that had not a lot of equity in it. Now, covid drove the real estate prices so crazy that people are overpaying for the properties and now we're seeing massive repercussions, now especially. I don't know why, but we're getting multiple properties coming in from Texas now where people have over leveraged the properties to the tune of $50,000 to $80,000 more than the property was worth. Now why is this, I guess, ultimately becoming a short sale? Well, people are losing their jobs or they have to specific state to go to another state for employment or job opportunity. So I'm not talking specifically just Texas, really, anywhere where people were getting into these massive bidding wars and the casualties are. We're seeing people that are in trouble from 2022, 2023 from purchasing done.

Matt Merenoff:

I, as I said, covid era now forget COVID. Let's talk about before COVID 2019, we were jumping and popping with properties that were in the fall. Now maybe it's because I'm on a different side of the curtain. You guys are mainstream. Most real estate agents we are dealing with, you know, distressed homeowners and distressed properties that literally using their properties, like reverse mortgages, not paying their mortgage and eating up their equity. So I don't think it's that.

Matt Merenoff:

People are always like oh, you know, short sales are non-existent, we're finding them and they are literally everywhere. They're in pretty much every state. So we have a niche where people are coming to us. So I don't want to correct anybody when they say, oh, short sales, they're non-existent, they're not on our market share. There are properties out there that are sleepers that after three months or so, at that point then the properties will hit the market. But because you know, everything had happened during COVID, things kind of like took a reset and were slowing down and they're trying to figure out ways to keep people in their properties. You know, they had the deferments, they had the forbearances, then they had the loan modification and there's specific things that people don't know what to say and say to the lenders to try to help them and put them in better situations. So I just want to correct when people say there aren't a lot of short sales out there, they may or may not be short sales.

Matt Merenoff:

Last year we did about 19 properties where we help people navigate, avoiding foreclosure, saving the equity in their properties, because these properties were in pre foreclosure going into foreclosure. So there's two things that we're coming across People that have equity in it, which is totally different than 2005, 2008, when things were crazy, to now, where people have no equity. So there's equity and there's no equity in this. Properties that are in pre-foreclosure, heading towards foreclosure and correct me if I'm wrong, but back in the day you guys you did short sales, you were heavily into it, correct?

Maria Quattrone:

2009, 10,. There was many short sales. Right, it took a while for people to accept what was going on, even though there was a big crash. That was in the news. You know, bears and starting Lehman Brothers, and all it happened before that, though it started happening. Really the markets shifted at the end of 06 is when the inventory started to climb.

Matt Merenoff:

So there's a scene in the movie the Big Short. I don't know if you ever saw that movie I did.

Maria Quattrone:

It's a great movie.

Matt Merenoff:

So there's a scene in the movie and the guy knocks on the front door and he says is Rufus here? And the guy says, no, Rufus isn't here. With a weird look on his face he goes why are you looking for Rufus? And he says, well, he's the mortgage holder of the mortgage. He goes Rufus, that's the owner's dog. They actually wrote a mortgage in the dog's name. So it's funny.

Matt Merenoff:

People are like, oh, these things can't happen. A couple of years ago, big banks were getting nailed because they were opening up credit cards and animals names you know or accounts. They're opening up checking accounts and animals because they have to meet quotas. What's my point? My point is is that you know people are like oh well, it's the bag. You can't go up against the bag. The bag's always right. You know the reality is, you know it's big business. So when someone this is the first thing I say in the beginning to myself I say I tell people, don't panic, I'll let you know when it's time to panic. And the other thing is is that if you don't think that in some cases banks act like banksters, like a gangster banksters, you're wrong, because they really do. They don't have to critique and help homeowners that are in trouble. They have to process, and as long as they process and they do their job, then they're doing their part. But I've seen people lose houses or potentially get ready to lose houses and lose modifications for like 15 cents a dollar. All they had to do is move a couple of pennies over and they would qualify for modification, but that's not their job. So I like when big banks are like, I'll be leery of third-party companies. Yes, be leery, but at the same point, educate yourself. There are so many people out there right now trying to emulate what my team does, what I personally do, and it cracks me up because now they're starting to use my verbiage, they're starting to use my forms, they're trying to, like you know, basically be me.

Matt Merenoff:

The reality is they just don't understand the right way to navigate through the short sale process and to be able to, you know, weave, bob and weave when really you need to weave and go into the current. It's kind of like you're in an ocean. You worry about the undertow. Don't panic so much about the undertow, which is the foreclosure process. Worry more about how you're going to get out of it. Relax your body, Try to figure out which way is up, Get your bearing and then flow into it and see what you can do. And that's the problem.

Matt Merenoff:

There's so many people in this industry. They're crooks and they're not making it easy for people. Now here's the thing. Not everybody gets to keep their property because people get a mixed message from them oh, do you save people's houses or do you help them avoid foreclosure? I do both. The reality is that if somebody wants to save their house, it is their right. But I will say more times, more than ever, people don't get to keep their properties because they've already exhausted all options and they've gotten really bad advice from people.

Matt Merenoff:

If you could pay your mortgage, pay it Not paying your mortgage and your bank, seeing that you have the ability, could pay your mortgage, pay it Not paying your mortgage and your bank, seeing that you have the ability to pay your mortgage, basically telling your bank I'm committing fraud. Right, you have the revenue, you have the income coming in, but you're not paying it. You can't just do that. It has to be a method to your madness, it has to be a means to the end, and that has a lot to do with your in and outgoing expenses, your profit and loss, and I know that there's a lot of things that I'm probably talking over people's heads because they don't know. This is basically what I do day in and day out. But I think you were going to ask me how does the short sale process work? Is that?

Maria Quattrone:

correct. Well, first I want to know for our listeners, our agents, when should they get you involved?

Matt Merenoff:

So I get a lot of I don't. I didn't know when to bring you in, I didn't know how to explain to you the scenario, explain to you the scenario. So there's a form that I put together and that form is for the homeowner and it's actually for a third party and that's on my website. We'll talk about that later. But if you have any scenario where you think something is a distressful situation, you think something is a distressful situation. They might not be distressed with their real estate. They might just be, you know, distressed financially, but not realizing that they did a loan modification in the past, meaning like, oh, I did a loan modification, it's all taken care of, I don't have to worry about it.

Matt Merenoff:

That might not necessarily true. Maybe you didn't get that forgiveness. I tell, tell people if you come across somebody who's in trouble with a property, they're going to go late or they are late. Best case scenario bring me in. Bring me in, if you can, from the beginning. And the reason why I say that is because we might be able to stop the process before it starts and give us even more time to navigate, to see what we can do. One, two. Maybe we can help salvage their credit so their credit won't tank so fast too. Put them in a better financial situation, whereas if they know they're not going to be able to afford the property and they're moving, we can contact the lender right away and let them know hey look, there's a death in the family. Maybe we can help them get a deferment, maybe we can get them, you know, a forbearance. Contact you or another agent or whoever, whoever's bringing the lead, get that property listed, because at that point, when you do stuff like that, that helps slow down the credit process.

Matt Merenoff:

So there's a lot of things I tell people, but nobody wants to listen. Everybody wants to say, oh, I'm a youtube educator or, you know, google expert or whatever it is. The reality is they don't put a lot of that information, the correct information even out there. So if you have somebody or a scenario that you're not sure maybe they have multiple properties or somebody or a scenario that you're not sure maybe they have multiple properties, or maybe they have something in a business name and that personal name, or our joint friend has a hard money loan and maybe they signed for it personally. So I say, if you can bring me in from the beginning, or if you start to smell a scenario that sounds oddly familiar to you or not familiar, bring me in.

Maria Quattrone:

So basically, sooner is better than later. 100% In a short answer Immediately bring them in because we don't know. Maybe they didn't have a loan modification, Maybe you can do a loan modification. Maybe they have a lot of equity but they can't pay their mortgage right now. Maybe they have a lot of credit cards and they're paying it towards a credit card because it's cheaper to kind of try to pay down the credit card with 29% than paying the 3% loan. Who knows?

Matt Merenoff:

Right Exactly. Or how to unlock their equity in their property before they actually go late to help save them. I know a credit card that is out of control right now.

Maria Quattrone:

The most it's ever been. So when somebody doesn't pay their mortgage, is it how many months before something starts to happen?

Matt Merenoff:

It's usually. Well, you're going to get warning shots. First 30 days they're going to call you. They're going to say, hey, what's the payment? Everything okay. Second month they're going to call you again and say look, you're dangerously approaching foreclosure. You know foreclosure. And then in the third month, you know they will get ready to possibly send out a letter basically saying hey, you're, you know, if you go four payments behind, at that point you're going to be in foreclosure. We're going to send out a letter basically saying that at this point going forward, if you don't get back on track, you're gonna be in trouble. Once it's once you go past like six months, you're approaching the point of no return because you, most of the lenders will allow you to do a repayment option within the first six months, but after you go past that, you're done then they file official foreclosure.

Matt Merenoff:

They're starting the proceedings okay, it's usually like three months, four months. They're going to send out a letter to you saying that we are starting procedures for foreclosure action.

Maria Quattrone:

So basically, as soon as they start, they know that there's a problem. Don't wait, Act, Don't we Act? You know, that's one of the things I see Matt is like. We talk to a lot of sellers and people are embarrassed and they don't want to tell you all the time the truth. Most of the time we get half truths. So I always say, look, I can't help you if I don't know the information. You got to be able to pull it out of them some way somehow. Otherwise they think that they're going to get something over on you by not telling you when, If they would have told you to begin with, you could have helped them, and it might be too late.

Matt Merenoff:

I'm going to tell you something. When someone says what's the best way to figure out A financial snapshot From somebody, when you go to a doctor's office and you don't feel good, one of the first things they do is take an EKG, correct.

Maria Quattrone:

EKG Blood pressure. Ekg Take your weight.

Matt Merenoff:

Normally if you go into a doctor's office you don't feel good. Yeah, it'll be the blood pressure and I'll do an EKG. To me an EKG is title. Title is so massively important because you know most people that go to a doctor's office. They don't know what's wrong with them. Most people that are potentially in trouble with their property may not remember having a judgment from a credit card from five years ago. At that point it might've just been a letter that was sent to them in the mail. Nobody opens up their mail. Those things eventually are going to attach to you and or your property. So if you have a judgment against you, that's something that is going to have to be resolved or potentially a lien that might be attached to your property, something like the IRS. So these are types of things that we come across all the time. Here's the problem Most people that are in the real estate realm that we're in, they don't want to run title.

Maria Quattrone:

Title companies don't want to run title for you.

Matt Merenoff:

Well, if you have an established working relationship, like we do, we use multiple title companies they'll run title for us because they know we close. They know at some point something's going to happen Of course I'm not saying all.

Maria Quattrone:

I'm saying. You have relationships, some of us have relationships, but most of the time no, they don't.

Matt Merenoff:

That's the thing. That's the point I'm trying to make. We have relationships, but most people don't have the relationship.

Maria Quattrone:

No, that's what I'm saying. Most don't.

Matt Merenoff:

Yeah, saying move soon. Yeah, they don't know. You know, like if you're having a stroke to prevent, they tell you take a bare ass and put it underneath your tongue. Most people don't know. Really, what you should do is you should consult with a professional, like a real estate agent, like an attorney. Then there's multiple different attorneys that you can reach out to, based on the scenario.

Matt Merenoff:

But the reality is everybody buries their head in the sand. They don't know what to say, they don't know how to say it, they don't know how to convey it. They're absolutely like you said before they're embarrassed. So I tell people it doesn't matter whether you have a Chevy Corolla in your driveway or a Bugatti in your driveway. At some point me or maybe not somebody would have a financial distress in their life and everybody's worried about keeping up with the Joneses. They shouldn't worry about that For me.

Matt Merenoff:

I tell people a simple one you can lie to everybody else, you can lie to your spouse, you can lie to your side piece, but you have to tell me the absolute truth, because if you don't, I don't know if I can help you and if I find out and this has happened where people have not told me the absolute truth from the beginning.

Matt Merenoff:

And I've gotten called out by banks and they've actually said to me Matt, are you aware of the fact? Actually, mr Marinoffoff, you aware of the fact that your client um sent in like faulty bank statements? Are you aware of the fact that he's had he has two other properties, but on the application you say he only has one, only has one property. I was like, listen, I'm only going off of what they're telling me. So if you're telling me on a recorded line that they lied, they lied to both of us, they didn't just lie to me. So I try to make it as clear as possible from the beginning. Tell me what's going on, because then that way I can figure out how to help you out of the situation you're in.

Maria Quattrone:

So, in regards to the timeline, let's talk about the time it takes to get a short sale done, so they engage you, we to get a short sale done, so they engage you, we're engaged. We send them to you, they engage you, you send us the paperwork. It goes up on the market. Three weeks later we have an offer. Now what we?

Matt Merenoff:

send it to you. Normally I would say to you in a perfect world you got to be great. But that doesn't normally happen like that. Let's just say, if I have a client and I engage a real estate agent and I refer something out, I tell the client this is what we need from you to move forward on our end. And then on the other end, from the listing side, this is what they're going to need from you. About 50% of the time they'll get what they need for the listing side, but the other part of it they're like slow getting what we need.

Matt Merenoff:

We need authorization my company to speak with any of the lenders, anybody that's in contact. It's not a power of attorney, it's not a limited power of attorney. It's just a simple authorization form that allows us to speak with anybody that's involved in the financial aspect of it. There's also a packet of information that we need filled out. People sometimes are so lazy about that. I'm telling you this because it slows down the timeline of the process. I could lose 30 to 60 days just for not getting what we need from the homeowner correctly. So you can.

Maria Quattrone:

What's up? We know all about it. It takes sometimes blood, sweat and tears to get a seller's disclosure back.

Matt Merenoff:

Right.

Maria Quattrone:

And you know I hold the listing hostage, meaning it doesn't go active. It'll sit in coming soon status until we have a seller's disclosure Right. So we're aware of the way that consumers behave and how slow some are to act. When I look at it, just like human behavior. So how you do one thing is how you do everything.

Matt Merenoff:

The reality is and nobody's ever corrected me on this when you're in a situation of financial disaster and a potential disaster and you're used to having amazing credit, and little by little it's like a crack in the dam and now the dam is exploded and it's wide open and now, like everything has just gone to shit, now your credit is just tanking. It's almost like they get to a certain point and they're floating in the water and go oh my God, this isn't so bad. I had amazing credit. It was such a stress to pay my bills. Every single month I paid my mortgage payment. Woo, this is fun. They get complacent. So reeling them back in and saying guys, you haven't paid a mortgage anywhere from three months to 10 years. I'm gonna bring you back down to reality now. So the start of it is get maria the paperwork she needs. Get me the paperwork I need so we can move forward. You will get a lot of people that are my credits already shut. Anyway, let me you something If you have a property and that property goes to foreclosure instant death for your credit You'll have a foreclosure for a long time in your career report.

Matt Merenoff:

Some people file bankruptcy to prolong the process of losing the property, but nobody thinks about the repercussions of all of that. Now you got to go rent. Who the hell is going to rent to you? Nobody's going to want to rent to you. They're going to want anywhere between three to 12 months of the first year's rent payment up front, and legally they can ask that you are a financial nightmare and you can say, oh, don't worry, I'll take care of it, I'll pay for it, I'll make sure everything's. But if you look at your credit track record, they don't want you.

Matt Merenoff:

So I tell people from the beginning we're going to get you back on track, but you got to want to get back on track. You're saying you want to do a short sale on your house, but let me tell you what's entailed in doing the short sale on the house. So make sure you get us what we need, because what's going to happen is we're only going to ask two or three times and if you don't get us what we need, we will close the file out. And I don't care who that upsets, but who wants to go after somebody chasing? If I only had 10, 15 files, it'd be a different story, but we're working with a massive database of properties of people that are in trouble, that want help. I want to work with the people that want help. Nobody wants to chase somebody for, ultimately, for them to for the property to go to foreclosure. And now you wasted all that time for no reason.

Maria Quattrone:

No doubt it's the same thing, just in general, in any business. You know, chasing people, I always say the more you have to chase just as they agree. Here's the thing when they've agreed, then you need to chase them to actually sign the paperwork that they need, In our case, a listing contract.

Matt Merenoff:

Yeah.

Maria Quattrone:

It's like great, this is how the whole thing's going to be. Yeah. No thank you, this is how the whole thing's going to be. Yeah, no, thank you. I actually, after a couple of weeks it's not signed. I told the office to cancel out the docu sign. I said just withdraw it, cancel it out, because this is how it's going to be the rest of the way and time's money and we don't have time for this. We want to help the people that want to be helped.

Matt Merenoff:

Yeah, I agree.

Maria Quattrone:

Period, this game of cat and mouse go play with somebody else. That's the honest truth. You know, our job is to be the solution. We can't be the solution if you're not going to do your part, regardless. If it's the short sale, whatever you know working to get the taxes fixed, the tax abatement. I love when I refer somebody to somebody and then they don't get back to them. They're like oh, they never got back to me, they begged me for the referral.

Maria Quattrone:

Like beg me please, I need help. Can you find this person? I have this person. I have the referral. Like beg me please, I need help. Can you find this person or have this person? I have the referral. And then I asked my referral partner hey, did they call you? No, never heard from them. I'm like, anyway, so we give you the paperwork, we have an offer. How long is it going to take to get this thing done?

Matt Merenoff:

if everybody gives us what we need in a time, assuming you have all. If we have everything, a short sale really shouldn't take more than three months to get completed. It really shouldn't. If everything is aligned, you have the paperwork, you have the evaluation, you have to do a dispute on the property if an evaluation has run out on the property because, remember, sometimes these properties have already been reviewed by someone else, so they might have to do another value on the property and they won't.

Maria Quattrone:

Assuming none of that happened, brand new one.

Matt Merenoff:

Should take three, four, three, four months.

Maria Quattrone:

From the time of agreement is set up.

Matt Merenoff:

From getting everything in place, going through the paperwork, getting it listed, getting an offer, moving forward. If it's a very vanilla situation, it should take three months, four months.

Maria Quattrone:

In totality, then yeah. Yeah, well, we're working with the Shirt Sale. Expert. Matt, you've got an event coming up.

Matt Merenoff:

It's not necessarily an event. It's an online training portal. This is something that you know, for me, I've been working on, or something that I've been creating or tossing around forever. You go to these live events. You spend tremendous money, you do airfare, you do hotel, you do food, you do car transportation, whatever it is. I'm making it. So the portal will be 100% pure educational on-demand. Learn at your own pace, go back, it's yours for life and there's going to be multiple modules in there.

Matt Merenoff:

My cheat sheets that I wrote down on little pieces of paper for years ultimately put into the portal itself, and I'm excited about it because this way, people maybe they don't want to do the short sale, but they want to understand how the short sale process works, and for me, this is something that it's a necessity. It's a need because I'm coming across older agents that are seasoned and new agents and they think that a short sale is an Ro. You know as well as I do reo is real estate owned, so it's everything in one place to help people be able to figure out how to navigate and understand the true process and how a short sale works.

Maria Quattrone:

So what's the uh website name?

Matt Merenoff:

The website is your Short Sale Success YourShortSaleSuccesscom. Yourshortsalesuccesscom.

Maria Quattrone:

Awesome. When will it be launching?

Matt Merenoff:

It's live now. We've been doing a lot of testing with it beta testing. It works. We're getting testimonial videos for people right now that have gone through the class itself. I wanted to make sure everything was 100% beautiful before we did an actual serious launch. You're going to start seeing it pop up all over the place, hopefully on the internet very soon. Awesome, Hopefully. People.

Maria Quattrone:

Yourshortsalesuccesscom. You go there to get all the coaching you need for short sales, how to navigate them for agents and for consumers right.

Matt Merenoff:

If a homeowner wants to understand how the short sale process works, it would be an amazing tool for them. If really any type of real estate professional wants to understand how the process works, it would be an amazing tool for them. If really any type of real estate professional wants to understand how the process works, then, yes, it would be an amazing tool for them. Can you be able to do a short sale after going through the portal? Yes, will you be as experienced and well-versed as myself? No, but it will give you the leg up that I didn't have when I started in the industry 20 years ago. It will catapult you into years, many, many years past, where I was with the experience and understand the information and the knowledge that's needed to Wow.

Maria Quattrone:

That's awesome. Well, congratulations on getting that up there and getting that done. I know what a huge feat that is to get online coaching and training done, so we're in the process of that now. So that's awesome. Congratulations on that, matt. Thank you for being on our show today. Be the solution podcast. You are the short sale solution, so look forward to getting these deals we have with you through the system and to the table.

Matt Merenoff:

Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me on. I appreciate you.

Maria Quattrone:

Always, you too.