This is an email that I sent to the short sale negotiator with Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. It may not do any good but at least I feel a teensy bit better. Carol is my partner on several short sale listings. Without her, I would go insane!!!

Dear _______,

I am sure that Carol informed you but I want to officially notify you that yet another escrow is canceled and the 4th buyer has walked from this property. The first three were due to delays and procrastination from the first lien-holder (you and whoever deleted our file late-January) and the last buyer because the 2nd lien holder would not accept your generous offer of $10,000.

We have put the property back on the market at yet another price reduction as we are still in a declining market. I am really puzzled that neither you nor the second lien-holder seems to know what time is of the essence means in a real estate contract. In this situation, time is money as well as every time that we put the property back on the market; you stand to lose 5-7% of the condo's value. Five months is TOO LONG for a process that should have been done in 4-6 weeks!

In the next HUD-1--if we get another offer before our clients' pending bankruptcy--I will only ask for $3000 for the second lien-holder. I also feel that because we are doing our job for the THIRD time due to yours and the seconds dilatoriness, we are entitled to be paid our commission 3 times and I will ask for this. As I doubt that you would pay Keller Williams 9% and the other agent 3%, we will settle for 3% for Carol, 3% for me and 3% for the buyer's agent.

Believe me, I and every other agent who is working hard to help people in Marina Bay out of their cumbersome loans are getting extremely fed up with the process. Something has to change or you will soon own dozens of homes that you will NEVER sell to owner-occupants as the owner-occupancy rate is less than 60%. Wells Fargo will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to foreclose and then lose even more as investors will be the only ones with cash to purchase and then no one else will be able to sell EVER and the vicious cycle of foreclosure will perpetuate itself until you and the developer and a few investors own the entire complex. Is this what Wells Fargo wants????

If we cannot close our next offer in less than 30 days, you will own this condo. You really need to help us help you.

Warm Regards,
Rebecca White, GRI
415.412.1977

www.RebeccaRealtor.com

Keller Williams San Francisco Properties

The 3rd Largest Real Estate Company in North America

For the first time in my life (30 years off and on in real estate), I have had a listing for more than a year. Granted, most of this time, it was in escrow, 3 negotiators for the first and 3 negotiators for the second and delay after excuse after delay ad nausea.

After 8 months, the most patient buyer walked away, having paid for an inspection, an appraisal, and waiting above and beyond anyone else I have ever worked with.

I warned the first over and over that if they didn't accept the offer and give $7-8,000 more to the 2nd, they would lose tens of thousands of dollars. This wasn't a threat, merely a statement of fact that we were still in a declining market in this neck of the woods and the longer they took, the less the property would be worth.

With each subsequent CMA, I demonstrated a decrease in value. It fell on deaf ears.

I don't understand why banks are so inflexible with their policies. Chase refused to accept $3000 and was adamant that they would rather have nothing than $3000. Should this property go into foreclosure, they would get nothing. They don't care if these kids lose their home and it is not their job to prevent foreclosure. (I took notes on these conversation but it would infuriate me to read them to go into detail how inconsiderate and unyielding these men in management were.)

Because Bank of America refused to give Chase the $10,000 I had requested, I had no choice but to have the buyer withdraw his above-market value offer, agree to give Chase $8,000 out of his pocket, and we re-wrote the offer to B of A at the current market value. This offer was $65,000 less than the previous offer but backed up by comps, a CMA and 10% above the median price. It was rejected. We came up another $5000 and NEVER heard from B of A.

Now the offer is withdrawn, the house is back on the market for $200,000 ($40,000 less than the previous three offers) and already has significant interest and one offer.

I don't get it. Why are banks wiling to lose money instead of helping people? Everyone knows that banks lose substantially more when they sell an REO rather than accept a short sale. Why won't they "mitigate" their losses and lose $200,000 instead of $300,000. I am, concerned that we are funding the bailout and the banks are being stupid and stubborn with their policies and NOT helping people. People need help-not unwavering policies that benefit no one-ot even the bank.

None of this makes sense and the most frustrating thing is even when I talk to supervisors and management, NO ONE is willing to help, change or bend.

Believe me, I am sick of short sales and if banks do not drastically change their policies immediately, no Realtor is going to want to take on the challenge, futility and insanity of banging their head against a wall to no avail.

Banks, you had better get your act together or you will all be out of business.

One of the great reasons I love working for Keller Williams San Francisco Properties is that we are involved in our community.

Last Thursday, close to 20 of us went down to GLIDE Memorial United Methodist Church and helped serve over 500 meals to the homeless and the hungry. It was extremely gratifying and we enjoyed ourselves. We have done this a few times before and hope to make a regular habit of it.

In the picture are Charlene Delaney, the owner of our office; Katey Shinn, the Team Leader; and Greg Gamp who is also involved with EARN (helping families buy homes).

I was about to rant about which lender was my least favorite but until I get every single short sale that I have in escrow approved, that may not be too wise.

Instead I will focus on something positive:  my FIRST listing in quite some time that is NOT a short sale. YES-some do exist.

This is a great 2-bedroom and 2-bath condo in Marina Bay Northshore aka Melville Square. My colleague, Carol, and I had another client Feng Shui the place (is that a verb?), another client paint and repair and through our contacts and networking, the place is nearly immaculate and ready for an impatient person to move right in!

www.1207Melville.com

I say "impatient" as there is no lender to approve the contract and no lender to approve the sale. This means that we need to get cracking on our disclosure package. J

In the meantime, we are OPEN TODAY, Sunday, May 10, 2009, from 2 pm - 4 pm. Take a nice drive out to Marina Bay, enjoy the fabulous water views, eat at Salute and/or feed the geese. See what a mere $200,000 will still buy less than 30 minutes from San Francisco!

~Rebecca White

I had heard from a title company rep that short sales were being out-sourced. This didn't make any sense to me so I wrote it off as mere speculation or a rumor-until TODAY!!!

One of my short sales is a Greenpoint--now Countrywide--loan. I called to make sure that they had the letter of authorization that I had faxed in a week earlier and to see where to fax the package.

After a few false starts and disconnects, William transferred me to Lavina (sp). She was clueless in our conversation. When I asked if she needed A, B and C; she told me "no", she needed B, C, and A. She called one of the contracts by the wrong name and I had to stop her several times to get her to answer questions. It was as if she were reading a spiel and wanted to get through it as quickly as possible. Understanding her was incredibly difficult and frustrating. Short sales are hard enough without this additional hurdle of language, idiom and jargon barriers.

She called herself a "loan counselor". I politely asked what someone in India knew about a loan in California. After much frustration, she transferred me to Susan who between yawns (they work these people too much) corrected two vital pieces of Lavina's information and was surprised that I had this info and wanted to know where I got it. She seemed a bit surprised as well that I had spoken to someone in India.

So-here is my question:  If these companies are receiving US taxpayer money from the "bailout"-why the He** are we supporting the thriving Indian economy instead of our own floundering one???????????

Does Barack Obama know that the money that is supposed to help the American economy is going to India? I am very upset by this.

It is bad enough that I have to deal with India and the Philippines for my phone bills but no one should have to talk to someone so far away for a local-and incredibly sensitive--issue. One of my clients was upset when I shared this information with him as ALL of his financial information could now be compromised. He predicted a huge lawsuit and then maybe Countrywide won't be so penny-wise and pound foolish-can I say stupid?!?!?

As much as I HATE short sales (I'll rant another time about my "run-in" with Chase yesterday), they are here to stay in many neighborhoods in San Francisco.

These are statistics from March of this year. The first two columns are single-family homes and the last one is condos. What is interesting is that whereas the percentage is about the same from early- to late-March, the total number is increasing. In fact, the number of SFR short sales has increased 14% in the past 3-4 months (since early December) and has been as high as 18% of total inventory recently.

Let me know if you have any comments or questions.

~Rebecca White

Wow-two ratified contracts last week! Six of my nine listings are in escrow in one form or another and I am expecting more offers on 2-3 of these plus on another active listing.

Who said that the market is slow????

Granted these are short sales and take more time but I would rather be busy doing lots of little transactions than be bored waiting for the one big one.

I am aware that many of us do not like short sales. Most agents I know don't like them; many prospective purchasers do not like having to wait for 2-3-4 months (sometimes longer) for lender approval.

I am in one short sale-with B of A and Chase-going on 7 months now. If I didn't care about my clients, I would have thrown in the towel a long time ago. Another lender (Wells Fargo Home Mortgage) deleted our package because they claimed that they didn't have something that had been faxed to them three times. I got a timely offer, over asking, and a back-up and their 3-4 weeks to respond has turned into 2 ½ months and we still hear 30 more days every time we speak to them.

I am soooooooooooooo annoyed with these lenders. Why can't they approve these transactions in a timely manner? Van anything be done to compel them to respond? To communicate? I am very frustrated with every lender but one with whom I have dealt-and that was a year ago. If the lenders are so overwhelmed, why don't they use those billions of dollars of bail-out money to hire more staff in their loss mitigation departments????????

In one of three I am now doing with Countrywide, I faxed the package in March 5, again the 13th and yet again March 23. Finally when we followed up on the third submission, a very nice woman gave us her email and Voila! we were in the system the next day.

When we asked her why no one had done this before, she said that we should have asked for an email and to speak with a supervisor. My client and I told her that we had repeatedly asked for an email as the faxes were lost in space and had asked the last guy with whom we spoke for a supervisor and he refused!

Now I have got to go through this two more times with Countrywide.

And what really angers me is that after all of this hard work, they have the gall to not only reduce my commission from 6% to 5%--which I can live with-but then they want me to cut it even more (my deal from H*** with Chase as the second).

There are times I wonder why I bother with all of this aggravation and then I realize it is for two or three reasons. Most importantly, I do care about the people who have lost their wealth in their homes. Concurrent with that is their gratitude provides me with more referrals and future business. Lastly, the reality is that short sales are here and will be here for a while. (If I can figure out how to attach or copy an excel spread sheet, I will provide the San Francisco short sale stats in another post.)

~Rebecca White

Ouch-the backlash! I am befuddled by some of your comments (to my last blog post). Yes, it is good to get comments but part of being an independent contractor is just that--being able to make choices and some difficult decisions.

I have tracked a number of homes that have gone down, down, down in price. This one on Church was $112,000 when I first saw it. It was marketed by several brokers and went down to $85,000, less, less, $50-something and finally sold for $34,639. OMIGOD-the land or sewer or whatever is worth more than that!! I showed it several times to no avail. In November of 2005, there was a loan amount of $312,000 and it is assessed for over $200,000. Someone got an amazing bargain!!!

Fortunately, when some of these are REOs, the asset manager can offer bonuses and higher commissions to attract a cooperating broker to effect a sale. This is not always the case.

When a property is "controlled" by an attorney and a probate judge and the attorney won't go to the probate judge to do what it takes to sell something-even when the seller is willing to pay more out of her pocket-what can be done?

It is easy to judge unless one walks a mile in someone else's shoes. Sorry, but I work hard enough as it is for small amounts (less than $2000). At times, the short sales, REOs and first-time buyers do not seem worth the aggravation. I like to think that it all averages out but right now, my average list price is less than $300,000 and many of my listings are shared with someone else and/or referrals to boot.

I am not greedy nor a snob, I'd just like to get a paycheck again someday. :(

Wow, it wasn't easy but I canceled my listing of the little house that didn't sell in East Oakland.

Cute house--needed work, but great potential.

It is a sad state of affairs when price becomes irrelevant and some places won't sell no matter how low they are priced. Lowering the price of one acts as a downward spiral on the surrounding home prices.

No showings, no phone calls, nada. All someone would have had to do was buy, fix up with $20-30,000, rent out with cash flow and wait 3-5 years to triple their investment.

Of course, no one can predict the future, but I can be optimistic, right?

Wow, I am so bummed. For the first time, I am unable to sell a normal listing. This is neither a short sale nor an REO—well, it is a probate and according to the attorney, the court won’t allow more than a 6% commission. This means if I were to lower the price again to a mere $75,000—though not convinced that it would sell at this price—my net commission would be less than $700!!!

Since I am now dating my company’s broker, he told the owner and she told me to cancel the listing. The reward isn’t worth the risk to them? Or me?

I find all of this difficult to believe for two reasons. First, when I sold real estate in Oregon 10-12 years ago, I sold many condos and land in the $50-70,000 range. My biggest sale was considerably less than $300,000. Despite the “nickels and dimes”, I was able to garner $3 million in volume to be an MMDP (the successor to the “Million Dollar Club, stands for Multi-Million Dollar Producer). At one time, selling a million dollars in real estate was a big deal. Now it’s not enough (volume and resulting commission) to rent a studio in the City.

The second reason is that this is a cute house. The land was worth more than $100,000 at one time. Yes, it needs work but the potential!!! This is a solid working class East Oakland neighborhood. Some original details are intact. The lot is deep.

Do I regret taking this listing? (You may recall my ambivalence in a previous post or two?

I know that with some REO’s—and desperate sellers—commissions are 3.5 to 5%--and sometimes a bonus--to the Buyer’s Agent. Somehow the probate court won’t allow this—despite the trustee and beneficiary being the same person? (I have a buddy who specializes in probate—maybe he can do battle with the judge and attorney better than I can.)

I guess that all of this begs the question:  Are there really homes that will NOT sell in today’s market regardless of price???? It appears that way to me—what do you think?

P.S. In checking the recent MLS comps, two houses are pending under $50,000 and four recent sales were under $50,000. If my soon-to-former listing sold at this price, I would make $210. I am glad that that I didn’t waste $100 on a sign!