The sellers are taking all of the appliances and leaving the range. I read that in the marketing comments of a Sacramento short sale listing yesterday. Wow, really makes a buyer want to buy that short sale, doesn't it? Speaks volumes about the owners and, I might be reading too much into it, but it sounds like the listing agent could be a little irked, too.
What that type of sentiment conveys is the bank screwed the sellers so the sellers are going to screw the bank. Except it's not the bank that suffers. It's that first-time home buyer who is scraping together the 3.5% down payment required to buy a home with an FHA loan. The person those sellers once were. Makes me want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them. But I am also very relieved they didn't call me.
I like to work with sellers who have a conscience. Some agents will tell you it's not necessary to like your sellers because their money is just as good as anybody else's. However, I differ in that opinion. As a Sacramento short sale agent, when I list a home, I am making a commitment to those sellers to see it through to its successful conclusion.
That could be a very long commitment. It's certainly longer than a traditional transaction. Short sales in Sacramento take on average 4 to 6 months to close. I have one short sale right now that's been going on for 2 years. More than two years!! It's closing on Friday.
I have a lot of closings this month and next. A Sacramento short sale closed yesterday by the skin of its teeth, and you might be interested to hear what happened. This was the Aurora double loan short sale in which the second Aurora lender came back to us at closing to demand a contribution. Yes, after the approval letter was signed and after the HUD was approved.
After receiving the sellers' permission to tell the negotiator to go jump in the lake, I told the guy no. No, no, no. The buyer won't pay it, the agents won't pay it, and the sellers absolutely will NOT pay that demand. If the mortgage insurance company, which they just discovered affected the transaction, wants $7,500, Aurora will have to pay it. Whether Aurora did, I don't know, but the bank backed off and allowed us to close.
Except we couldn't close. Why couldn't we close? Because an underwriter decided it would not allow a contribution by the agent on the HUD. We were talking about $125. That was a reinspection fee charged to the buyers because the appraiser had to go back out to check that batteries for the smoke detectors and a carbon monoxide detector was installed. I had asked the sellers to do this early on when I took the listing. But it was overlooked.
The buyer's agent was very irritated and irate that his buyers were forced to pay an extra $125 for the reinspection. The agent registered displeasure and then left the country. Just to keep the peace among all the parties, I offered to pay the fee. But the underwriter would not approve it unless it was paid outside of escrow. I don't pay fees outside of escrow. I suggested they find a way to work this out. But the two mortgage loan officers could not figure it out, so the transaction did not close. Over $125!
I gathered information from my own mortgage broker and sent it to the buyers' lenders and agent. There was a way to do it. We closed this week. The lessons here are three-fold. First, make sure all of the smoke detectors have batteries and a carbon monoxide detector is installed before an appraiser goes out to the house. Smoke detectors take 9-volt batteries. A carbon monoxide detector costs about $25. The cost of a resinpection? $125. The cost of not closing escrow, enormous. Second, carefully choose your mortgage loan officer. And third, look at the big picture -- that of the opportunity to buy a short sale home -- so, don't make mountains out of molehills.
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