Steph Somers here. Call me a pessimist or call me a realist. Call me what you will but I never considered myself a particularly "lucky" person. In hindsight, perhaps I am.

I pretty much do a majority of the back end work on the short sales. I will call Chris to bring in the "big guns" when I have exhausted all of my charm with the negotiators of these deals. I see the "Back-out Buyers" being a growing phenomenon. As a matter of fact, from now on, I will assume that at least 1 buyer will back away from every short sale we do between the time we begin the process until we reach the end. I have started to tell our clients to expect needing to go through more than 1 buyers in an effort to prepare them for the possibility. If or when it happens, I want them to have considered the possibility ahead of time. The short sale process is difficult enough for the seller. Educating the consumer is part of the Real Estate profession.

Another little tid-bit to share relating to June's comment above... it is not uncommon for the customer service person at any given bank, not to know what they are talking about. The right hand typically does not know what the left hand is doing. In plain English, the customer service rep for the loss mitigation department or bank may not know how to read the notes, may not fully read the digital files, my not be familiar enough witht he terms used in the notes to feel comfortable reading them, and thus omit very important information. This is not true in all cases but it is sadly true n many cases. I mean no insult. It is just something you as a Realtor need to be aware of.

Just the other day I found that one of our short sale files was "closed-out". A close-out occurs when the bank is not getting a response from the client/Realtor and they just shut the file down and focus on another file. I do not blame them. They are beyond busy. BUT, they closed-out one of my short sales!!! because they claimed that they have been emailing me for a week or two and I had not returned their email. I called at least 2x per week and had to give all of my contact info to the representative including my email and phone number every time. Somehow they wrote down the wrong email once, then they used the wrong email address, and when I had called in, the customer  service reps I spoke to  NEVER communicated that they were trying to contact me. I was tipped off that something was wrong when I made my 3rd call that week and a new automated message revealed a clue that something was wrong: DO NOT CALL AGAIN FOR ANOTHER 30 DAYS. IF YOU DO, IT WILL JEOPARDIZE THE SHORT SALE PROCESS. (Bank of America) Nutty!

No logical explanation can make sense of what can sometimes transpire with Short Sales. Just have no expectations and prepare for an aggressive terrain when you gear up for some of these challenges.

Good luck out there!