By: Sher Hann

I enter California 154 off the 101, and am confronted with a panorama of hills greener than the Scottish Highlands. The roadside is dotted with bursts of color: yellow, gold, purple cream. Rain dances lightly on my windshield. Beyond the wildflowers, black cattle much on the green carpet beneath them. Vineyards form a checkerboard across the foothills.

I am driving from Westlake Village to Santa Maria for a day-long workshop on managing short-sale transactions. It is an eye-opening day, to say the least. The presenter is Sherman Smith, of Sherman Smith and Associates in Tustin. Since 1992 Sherman has handled hundreds, perhaps thousands, of short-sale transactions. His approach is systematic, practical and persistent. “You are looking for the person (at the lending institution) who will say Yes, he counsels. He gives us more than 40 pages of forms to use in the process:  He is comprehensive too.

On the drive home, I stop at the Cold Springs Tavern, at one time a stagecoach stop for cappuccino.  This place is akin to a frontier cabin. The lighting is dim the fireplace ablaze and the walls sport heads of deer and bear. There is no cappuccino.

I continue on, an unhappy wayfarer. Fog descends into the San Marcos Pass – thick, cottony and blinding. I imagine homeowners, many of them weary from long months of trying to do a loan modification, now turning to the short-sale process so they can move on with their lives. They are exhausted, floating like octopi in the pea soup of fog. Then I glimpse a few real estate agents, trying to swim through the grayness. Their strokes become more hurried and then random – flailing. It is a zoo – or an aquarium out there — in the world of short-sale transactions.

Finally, just a few miles before Santa Barbara, I escape the fog. I am listening to a Wyndam Hill recording, because I find it impossible to drive the California coastline and hills without hearing George Winston’s fingers skip along the keys.  It has been a satisfying day. I am more confident now that I have the dialog, tools and systems, to negotiate short sales.

The ocean, also gray, with glimpses of brilliant white, passes by on my right. The rain continues. The traffic gets heavier.

I am home.

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