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PROGRAM HR 3648: RULING THE SHORT SALE WORLD--A WISH LIST FOR PROCESSING--PART ONE

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Services for Real Estate Pros with Program HR 3648

PROGRAM HR 3648: RULING THE SHORT SALE WORLD--A WISH LIST FOR PROCESSING--PART ONE

For those of us at Program HR 3648 who process short sales, we spend lots of time on hold or listening to Muzak tunes--some good, some static-laden and some that are just plain awful, but all of this is repetitive and a little mind-numbing, so we find productive ways to spend our time during these long hold times:  we do paperwork, review the contents of the files we're working-checking for tasks and missing information or docs, etc., and, when we've finished all the on-hold tasks we can do, we end up doodling on our calendar desk pads or alphabetizing the pencils and markers in the pencil cup on our desk.  In other words, we have motivation and the time to think about what we would like a short sales process to be.  We have suggestions we know would make the process easier and better for everyone involved.  And our familiarity with the various lenders' processes is well-established because the transaction processors at Program HR 3648 don't handle 10-12 short sales a year, we each typically work multiple files every day and have dozens of approvals each month.

One of our top ten suggestions would be phone numbers that are specific to the department handling short sales and that will actually get us where we need to be with the first attempt.  We don't really care what name the group uses-loss mit, loan deficiency, foreclosure, or just plain short sales.  We do care that, when we finally connect with a live human being (after winding our way through the initial tape loop selections that don't recognize the owner's loan number, last four of their SS# or that misinterpret a clearing of our throat as a verbal response that sends us to an obscure department where English isn't even a second language), we are often transferred from department to department with a hang-up/disconnect or two along the way and can spend anywhere from 10 minutes to 90 minutes or more travelling the financial institution's telephone highway before we finally arrive at our destination.    

And the second part of Program HR 3648's suggestion, in addition to receiving a viable short sale department phone number, would be that we need fax numbers that will get our authorization to the right department in a reasonable amount of time, as well as direct fax numbers for submitting the other financial and purchase documents needed for a file.  It sometimes feels as if we spend more time re-faxing our authorizations--the key document for talking to and working with the lender--and our short sale docs than we do actually working on the short sale. 

Program HR 3648 would like to thank those lenders who have established good, working numbers to call to reach the short sales group directly and specific fax numbers for submitting both authorizations and short sale documents that don't change every week or that don't overload and reject what we're sending.  The time and mental energy we save when we have efficient submission contact information allows us to focus on what is most important--working the short sale itself.  So, if I ruled the Short Sale World, good contact numbers would be at the top of my wish list...oh, and perhaps some better tunes.

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