Short Sale Commission-Ectomy Help!

Surely if you have been involved in a short sale transaction the home owner's lender has attempted - and usually succeeded - in slashing your commission.  Now, help is available to resolve the vexing issue of commission extortion. 

Thanks to the efforts of the National Association of REALTORS (NAR) in response to the growing dissatisfaction of the membership over the outrageous practice of contractual interference perpetrated by some loan servicers.  I say contractual because the lender is apparently interfering with a valid listing agreement between consenting parties. 

It seems that some servicers of Fannie Mae loans are unaware of FNMA's short sale commissions' policy or believe it is not binding on them or simply choose to ignore the published policy. 

Fannie Mae has established the following process for REALTORS to seek assistance when short sale commission issues arise. 

Step 1: Determine whether the loan is owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae. Only the holder of the loan is allowed to do this, so do so in the presence of your client or after obtaining their written permission.  Log on to FNMA's website: www.fanniemae.com/loanlookup  or call: 1-800-7FANNIE. 

Step 2: If the servicer is unaware of or disagrees with the policy, provide a copy of Announcement 09-03 (available on www.realtor.org ) to the loan servicer and negotiate an appropriate commission based on the listing agreement (up to 6 percent). 

Step 3: Contact Fannie Mae if the dispute is not resolved directly with the servicer. Be prepared to provide the property address, name of owner, and Fannie Mae loan number (if available).

And, thanks to Fannie Mae for doing the right thing.

 From my blog posting of 6/24/09.  Good Luck.