Mortgage Short Sales

Common Plight"It's not uncommon to see this situation on the high endof the market—homes selling for less than it would cost tobuild them," said Holzknecht's agent, Joe Flick of RoanokeGroup in Seattle. The property came on the market eightmonths ago priced at $1.85 million, he said. Porter Michael Peterson, a 33-year-old linebacker for theNational Football League's Atlanta Falcons, bought amansion near Tampa, Florida, four months ago for $1.1million—almost half the amount of the mortgage taken out bythe sellers three years earlier, according to real estaterecords. Reggie Roberts, a spokesman for the Falcons,didn't return a call seeking comment. Short sales almost tripled to 40,000 in the first six monthsof 2009 from the same period a year earlier, according todata from the Office of Thrift Supervision. The bankregulator doesn't break out short sales by size ofmortgage.