I talk to my colleagues all the time on how banks, lenders, underlying investors, etc. absolutely BLOW SHORT SALE residential real estate deals out of the water on a regular basis, like they are getting a glass of water from the tap!  In fact, it's so routine and the short sale problem is so huge, that it barely gets a public mention anymore.

I think there should be a national database (or setup by a non-profit) that tracks (both property specific and aggregated at various higher levels such as neighborhood, municipality, region, state) the net difference (probably universally a net loss) between the short sale net proceeds when an offer is agreed to by the seller versus the investors/lenders net proceeds if foreclosure occurs.

My perception is: everyone loses far more when a property goes into foreclosure, and if actual data were capture, analyzed and reported, and then correlate this impact to a community and the larger economy, perhaps the tide would shift and more emphasis would be placed on concluding these transactions before they go into foreclosure.  It's the best alternative of a bad situation.

The reason this information is important is sometimes, far too often, a lender/investor will allow a property to go into foreclosure when it could be avoided with a successful short sale.

I think these statistics would create a public outrage and perhaps could be a catalyst to force the banks and underlying investors to stop playing an active participant in the demise of communities that are struggling.

Most of the time, it makes absolutely no financial sense at all and leaves everyone scratching their heads in disbelief.  The amount of money wasted in getting to short sale failure is also a wasted effort on many fronts.

And to think that banks actually want to eliminate the separation between commerce and banking and get into the business of real estate.  Makes me shudder!

Do such #s already exist somewhere?