Short Sales - What a Treat

The more I continue to work with short sales, the more I realize that they are always a house of cards. As agents we spend countless hours, weeks and months of hold time, and in the end have no control over what so ever. It's just a frustrating and often times helpless feeling. In this job, I'm looking for as much control as possible. I find that when I have my fingers on things, they seem to be done properly and on time. With short sales you have no control and are completely at their mercy.

Here are 2 examples I've had in the last 2 weeks. I have been working with a very highly qualified couple since March. We submitted our offer and were waiting for bank approval. Our offer is solid, near market price, and my buyers are barely even taking a loan out. After 4 months of negotiations back and forth, I find that the bank needed an updated form from the title company. The title company sent it back the next day and assumed all was well. However, all was not well. There was an extra letter in the e-mail address and the person that was supposed to get the paperwork did not get it. Instead of asking again for the paperwork, the bank simply closed the file and sent it back to the end of the line.

These poor buyers are distraught! They had been waiting for months on this and because of one typo, they are not sent back to square 1. I've been working with the listing agent and the negotiator in trying to get this resolved with no luck to this point. I'll have to keep you posted.

In my second scenario, I have 2 banks I'm dealing with. Luckily on this one, I'm the listing agent and thus have direct contact with the bank. I was able to get the 1st lender to sign off on the short sale, but the 2nd lender would not. They were asking for my client to come in with nearly $4000 when they had bank statements showing they he had no where near that. How can you expect someone to pay that kind of money at closing when they are already in dire financial straights. Finally, after about a week of wrestling they said they would accept $1000 and my seller is doing what he can. If this doesn't come through, they foreclosure will happen and most likely the 2nd will get nothing or next to nothing. I don't understand why they are playing this so tough when they have very little to stand on.

These are just a couple of examples I've had in the last 2 weeks. Unfortunately these seem to be the norm, and not exceptions. I guess this is why you have to work with someone that knows what they are doing and how the system works. If you ever have any questions feel free to call as I have dealt with all kinds of situations. If I don't have the answer, I can probably get it.