What's Next? Personal Injury Attorneys sueing Lenders?

Why not?

Think about it.  How long should a short sale actually take? 

Let's suppose an offer comes in on a house.  A professional short-sale listing agent has already worked with the seller gathering the paperwork that will be required fr the lender.  Sme lenders actually will image the documents prior to an offer.

The contract, PHUD and support docs are faxed to the lender.  Let's say two weeks for set-up which includes the imaging.

Let's give it another week to assign the file to a negotiator.  Total time so far is 3 weeks.

The negotiator reviews the file, orders the BPO, BPO comes in & goes thru the review process, negotiator runs the numbers - either an offer is close enough to submit to the investor or it's not.  At the end of 4 weeks, let's give 5 weeks, the listing agent should be able to hear from the lender as to a counter offer or that the file will be submitted to the investor for approval. 

Let's give the investor 3 to 4 weeks.  We are at the two month period now.

Investor approves, counters, whatever - maybe it has to go to MI.  whatever.

Then 30 days to close.   That's 3 months - ok, be generous, let's say 4 months - that is SIXTEEN weeks!

The homeowner has this three/four month period to vacate the home.  Just 3 or 4 more late payments hit his credit report.  The short sale closes and he can go on with his life.

But we know that is NOT how it happens.  Just ask anyone working a BoA or CW short, or how about Aurora?  Let's see a show of hands for shorts that take longer than 6 months?  9 months? I'll bet there are quite a few that could raise a hand for a 12-month short too.

The point is, the lenders CAN staff these departments to adequately handle the volume.  There are plenty of unemployed people with mortgage and related backgrounds that would train easily to fill the vacancies.  Lenders received plenty bail out money (I still don't know where that $$$ went!)

The homeowner suffers more damage to his credit report with the higher # of lates and faces an increased deficiency amount.  The increased damage to the homeowner is due to the lender not properly servicing the short sales and loan modifications. 

I hope an attorney figures it out how to quantify these damages to dollars and perhaps start some sort of class action law suit.

I read recently that a guy lost his job.  He got behind on his house payments.  He put his house ont he market for a short sale.  Meanwhile he found a job in another state and was prepared to relocate his family.   Just before the move, the new employer called him to withdraw the job offer - seems that they ran his credit.  Unfortunately, the new job required a good credit score.  

This country is credit driven - these lenders wasting so much time to process short sales are having a huge residual impact on the lives of the citizens of this country.

C'mon, there must be an attorney out there that can hit these lenders in the pocket (aka bottom line) - it's the ONLY language they understand.  Anybody?