Portland

[waterdog22]

We submitted an offer on a short sale 6 Days ago (actually signed it a week ago).  Yesterday morning, the listing agent told us she had not yet presented the offer to the seller/home owner.  During the same conversion, she said she was going to present the offer and touch base with our agent by the end of the day (yesterday).  At the present, still no word from the listing agent.  As a result, I did a little research and discovered that the seller/owner is also a real estate agent and she works out of the same office as the listing agent.

Would you believe her story?  

How is it that it that it is so hard to present an offer to someone who works in the same office as you?

What else could be going on here?

If they are just wasting my time, I intend to esure they are held accountable for any rules/laws they violate during the process.  What are my best avenues for doing so?

[Sailer]

Short sales are fishy,  we are going through  similar scenario.  We submitted our offer o Sept. 28th.  First the listing agent said she had already had one offer submitted so the process should be short (kind of an inside joke callng it a short sale).  Two weeks went by, nothing.  At our insistence our realtor called the listing realtor to see what was going on.  The List/ag said she didn't input the information correctly into the Equator system used by the bank.  Another two weeks the bank ordered the BPO.  Another two weeks BPO done, revised list price.  A week and a half ago list agt received verbal ok from bank.  We order inspection, start shopping for new windows and woodstove and get nothing more from thebank.  Cancel inspection for tomorrow, put off any more shopping, harangue our agent to call the list agent every day until we get written confirmation, begin to suspect list agent might be trying to put together another deal behind our backs.   Now totally frustrated, considering forgetting the whole deal and finding a non bank owned, non short sale property.  We will nver mke the DEC 12 closing date or Christmas in a home!!

Nothing is short about short sales........

[Chris____]

Maybe contact the broker as well as look at

http://www.rea.state.or.us/REA/complaint.shtml

[books]

I agree there is something fishy and stinky in short sales. Consider the source, banks are not notorious for being honest or having customer interest. There are many really great RE's out there fighting for their clients, there are also a few RE agents out there going for all they can get for themselves. (not unlike any business) In this arena it bits more because the buyer is spend their savings, and in-debting themselves for a lifetime.

The banks are not following the RE "rules" in selling, they have already been proven to not be following the rules when they forclosed in the first place.

When enough people complain or someone who knows someone get ripped off it will get looked into. Until then nothing is going to happen to change the current fishy process.  

[waterdog22]

So it turns out that the selling agent just does things at her own pace and in addition to being lazy and incompetent, it appears she has taken on more work than she can handle.  It took her nearly 2 weeks to present our original offer to the seller and over a month to get the properly filled out short sale offer to the bank.  Our agent follows up with her regularly, but nearly each time, we get news of another delay.  Now over 8 weeks after our original offer, we still haven't been assigned a negotiator.

We're treading lightly for now since she is our only path to buying this home, but after this is over I will do everything I can to make sure other buyers don't waste their time with her listings and sellers pick an agent that works hard for them.  

We're looking for a home with small acreage and some other fairly specific criteria, so as long as it's the only good match on the market for us we'll keep waiting, buy as soon as another home comes on the market that will work for us, we will be canceling this offer.

[waterdog22]

Well 4 months after the original offer, the bank countered our original offer.  The original offer was 90% of asking price and the bank countered at 96% of asking.  We have countered the bank with 92% of asking, but I'm not sure if this was a good move or not.   What are the chances the bank just rejects our offer and kills the deal?  Are they likely to respond within the week or are we months away from a decision again. Both loans on the home are with Wells Fargo.

We may have accepted the bank's counter if they would have responded sooner, but this process has taken so long that the value of the home has dropped 5% since we made our original offer.  If we didn't care one way or another, we probably should have countered at 86% of asking.

I know all bets are off in there are backup offers in place, but I do know our offer was the best offer they had in over 4 months on the market.

[Edd]

From a RE Investor and Licensed Agent:

So that you and everyone knows, Short Sales are where the Banks and the Owner agree to not "foreclose" on a property even though the bank gets less money than the full loan amount back (hence you "short the bank"). The dead-beat owner does not get any money, but walks away without burning their credit scores with a foreclosure.

That said, buying a house in a Short Sale is far more complicated than buying a Foreclosure because you are dealing with 2 parties rather than just 1 seller in the transaction.

The banks in Short Sales usualy do not have an incentive to sell quickly and so play games and take forever to return with a counter or outright rejection/acceptance of your offer. They have an attitude that they can wait to see if better offers surface.

In a Foreclosure, the non-performing loan/property is already on their books, which means it lowers the Banks cash on hand which in turn lowers their credit ability. This is bad for banks. They often are more interested in selling quickly than playing games and will take much less time to come back with a counter offer.

Anyway, if you choose to pursue a short sale, just know that it takes more time and could be more hassel than a traditional sale or foreclosure. More patience is necessary even though you may get a good deal in the end.

[waterdog22]

I know what a short sale is and that does't address my questions.  In addition you are wrong about a the bank's incentive to short sell a house.  They have money loaned out that is not returning a profit that they could invest elsewhere.  Foreclosure is expensive and if the short sale offer (mine is) is comparable to what they will likely get for the home in foreclosure then it generally saves them money to let the home sell short.  In my case, our original offer was on the middle to low end of fair market value and the banks counter was above fair market value, so the smart financial move for the bank would be to accept my counter.

What I really want to know is if the counter offer process is faster or if I'm likely to have to continue extending my counter for months and months?  With more homes coming on the market this spring, I'm tempted to just let the offer expire and the end of this week.

[Upside]

Waterdog..your frustration is evident in the tone of your last messsage..blasting the real estate agent.  I agree with the RE..you are not in a strong position of bargaining..the bank will wait your ass out..while taking more offers.. In this market..you should have taken their counter and you'd be progressing towards home ownership. Now you're at square one again..  A short sale is already below market (even though short sales are creating their own market) and you would be buying near the bottom..If theres time..I would accept the banks offer and move foward.  Short sales are a gift to an informed and patient buyer..sounds like you're trying to needle it down to the last dollar..

[waterdog22]

I definitely should not have accepted the bank's first counter because it was above fair market value.  Why should I go through the excrutiating pain of buying a short sale at above market value?  If we would have know how difficult this would be, our original offer would have been 10% lower and I wouldn't have come up much from there.  Wells Fargo describes their short sale process from offer to close as a 25 business day process, but in  reality it takes over 6 months.

We did finally come to an agreement on price a couple of months ago and were suppose to close today.  Unfortunately, Wells Fargo has delayed the process yet again because they apparently don't have anyone who knows how to read working in their Short Sale department. They are balking because the name of the person that they loaned money to is not the name of the person on the HUD statement (it's now a trust).  The HUD statement matches the deed and they have been provided that information, but failed to either read or comprehend it.  The irony is that they gave us 26 days to close from short sale approval to close and they are the ones who failed to get it done on time.

The good news is that another home of interest to us has come on the market and at 5:00 PM today we will no longer be in a contract to purchase this short sale, so we can make an offer if we so choose.  We will only be out the cost of the appraisal and inspection.  I'd happily forfeit those just to stick it to those who have made this process much more painful than it needed to be.

I wonder if these banks realize how many existing and future customers they lose their short sale processes.  I know that I will never do business in any way in the future that involves Wells Fargo.  I wouldn't even buy a used car if it meant that the owner would be paying off a Wells Farge loan with the proceeds.