Short Sale Showing Horror Stories: No Sign, No Lockbox, Appointment Only, Dogs On Property, Do Not Disturb Occupant, Drive By Only, Listing On Hold:
I've been pretty lucky representing buyers on short sales until lately, it seems it's getting harder to view them or maybe I've just had a stroke of bad luck!
(One of my colleagues says he will not show short sales anymore at all because of the inept agents that handle them)!
Ruling out short sale showings is just not possible in our Southwest Riverside County real estate market, right now. This is because the majority of the listings are short sales and buyers want to try to see them. Some listing agents are great at notifying, educating and preparing sellers who are short selling their homes...then there are the other 90 percent of short sale sellers who are so ill prepared they act surprised and even shocked that I want to show their home.
The hold status short sales are an entirely different case study and an entirely different problem. I have a buyer who is on alerts and called me to tell me that a home came up in a golf course area that she really wants to live in. By the time I called the listing agent the home was in "Hold", status. I asked why the home was in "Active", status for only a couple of hours and if we could see the home. The listing agent replied, "I put the home in hold status and when you do that you have to put a date and time for it to go active so the home went to active status automatically". My client still wanted to drive by the home and see the outside. Low and behold, the owner was standing outside waiting for another agent to do a BPO, my client immediately began quizzing the owner about the home and he became a little agitated so I stopped my client from questioning him and after looking at the back yard we moved on.
My client wanted to write an offer on the home without seeing the inside as I provided her with pictures from when it was previously listed.
we submitted our offer and the home showed up as active again three weeks later, and I got the same story from the listing agent...she had no idea that the home had automatically gone to active status and she needed to put it in hold again because the seller does not want to show the home.
Now, my client wants to look at other homes as we were told by the listing agent that the home will be in "Active", status again soon as the seller wants to see what other offers will come in because it has been so long and even though our full price conventional offer with total pre-qualification, is an awesome offer, asking for nothing, (because it is a short sale), the seller is willing to risk my buyer not waiting by refusing to sign the offer.
My buyer tells me she is really excited about another home, and just my luck it was another home that was in "Hold", status that just came active....I felt like
doing some kind of magic spell, or voodoo dance, to make this home easier to see than the last one and maybe I should have because when I called the show phone, I got an answering machine and then a call back to contact the wife at a different number.
Well knowing that short sales are difficult to show, I put on my best phone voice and contact the wife. I say as pleasant as possible that I would like to show the home at her convenience, when ever she likes! She stammers and stutters that she is not ready to show the home but if we really want to see it we could see the home but not until 6:40 p.m the following evening, because she had no idea that the home was to be shown and she had a lot of work to do on it.
If anyone has a magic spell or some voodoo that works to get into these homes easier, then please share, I'm ready to try anything!
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