Five years ago, I closed my 1st short sale listing without any training. The property had two loans from two different lenders. Luckily for my clients and for the lenders, it took only a couple of weeks for the lender (mainly the jr lienholder) to approve the short sale and the escrow closed 30 days after that. It was a milestone for me and a fresh start for my client who faced financial hardship. He was very happy and grateful. He had since referred me to his friends who needed help. Things were different than 5 years ago and the banks could take months to approve an offer. After going through three different buyers' offers over the course of 9 months, we were working with the 4th offer, a cash offer from a foreign buyer. Offering price had come down significantly during the 9 months. And yet, the appraiser the bank sent inflated the BPO values because he selected comps based on so-called Natural Boundaries defined in the lender's guideline. He used the sale comps on the same side of the subject property of a major road, even though the lower valued comps on the other side belongs in the same neighborhood. Besides this appraiser came from a different area who is not familiar with the local market.
So the lender countered the cash buyer's offer by almost 10% higher. There was no way the property was worth that much. The comps the appraiser used were sold higher because many foreign buyers (many know each other) overbid those homes (much nicer condition) without local knowledge. Therefore, I did my best to convinced the negotiator that the property was vacant for over 10 months and started to deteriorate, the lower sale comps should also be used because they were within half mile radius, and that the fact that the appraiser was not local, etc. Finally the bank approved the buyer's purchase price without any attached strings. Escrow closed 14 days after the approval. Hooray! I finally got paid after almost a year working on this listing diligently, never gave up. My client felt so sorry for me because they calculated my hourly pay to be below minimum wage. :-) But they thanked me dearly from the bottom of their heart. That's the best pay I can ever expect to receive for working on the short sales and help people who need help.
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