If you’re considering a short sale investment, do your research before you make a short sale offer! If there’s any conventional wisdom about short sales, it’s this: “Get comfortable, ’cause this is gonna take awhile.” No short sale investor wants to hear that. Neither does a short sale homeowner whose last, best and only hope for release from homeownership Hell is a successful short sale.

When you’re preparing your short sale offer, you need to know as much about the property as possible. Have it inspected by a reliable home inspector, if you don’t know what to look for yourself. This includes a thorough foundation inspection, and checks for leaks, mold growth, plumbing issues, and mechanical issues that will require serious investment on your part to correct deficiencies prior to sale. Check for other “defects” like liens on the property other than those that belong to the mortgage crowd. Late taxes and utility payments will need to be corrected prior to the sale and will affect the offer a bank can accept.

Be prepared to wait. On average, the bank will take nearly three months to respond to a short sale offer, but each case is different. Some homes have more than one mortgage. If this is the case on your short sale target, all lenders will have to agree to the short sale, and frankly, there’s not much incentive for seconds and thirds to agree to the sale, unless they can recover the outstanding debt through some other mechanism.

If property values in the area show a declining trend, you’ll need to take this into account when you prepare your short sale offer. There’s not much sense in making an offer on a home, only to find out that when you six months down the road, you’re already underwater.

Most short sale properties are still occupied, so they don’t typically experience the vandalism horrors that foreclosures do. As a short sale investor however, you may be surprised by the condition of the home if you can conclude a short sale. Simply put, be prepared to deal with things that didn’t show up on inspection.

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