I have a seller who wants to pay Bank of America the shortfall difference on a short sale, but B of A says let it go to foreclosure. We don't have time to talk about it.
I realize that many agents are struggling with short sales right now. Because the system is screwed up, and some banks in particular are almost impossible to work with. Bank staff are overworked, probably underpaid and buried in paperwork. I tell my buyers to throw out the short sale listings they get from me, because they're not worth the effort. Buyers can purchase a home that comes with warranties, where sellers will pay buyer's closing costs and the price is comparable to a short sale, so why should they bother pursuing what is guaranteed to become a headache without resolution?
Besides, some banks don't care.
Bank of America appears to be one of them.
B of A's loss mitigation department is in New York, which claims to handle all the short sales in the country from that location. We've been in escrow for two months. A negotiator, Tony Chestnut, is handling the file. I call him every day. The seller calls him every day. One day, about two weeks ago, Tony actually picked up his phone. This was before he figured out that if he lets all calls go to voice mail, eventually his voice mail box will fill up, and then he won't have to listen to messages nor answer his phone ever again. Pretty smart, that Tony.
While I had him on the phone, I asked him to look through the file to see if there was anything else he needed. He asked for an updated HUD-1. Looking at the appraisal, which came in about $100,000 less than the mortgage, he said he would approve the short sale but he needed to process the file before issuing final approval. He expected to have that completed, he said, within a week, two at most . That was two weeks ago.
This week, I called four times a day. Tony's voice mail box was still full, of course, so I transferred to loss mitigation. They'd dutifully send Tony an inter-office email and sometimes stick Post-It notes on his computer. But Tony never called. I finally left messages for Tony's boss, Keith. But nobody called all week.
The seller is willing to sign an unsecured prom note to Bank of America for many, many thousands of dollars. He would like to pay the bank the shortage. But Bank of America doesn't want to take his money.
After five days of calling four times a day, I got up at 5 AM this morning to call. The loss mitigation department said they would try to find him, but instead transferred me back into Tony's full voice mail box. I transferred my call back.
In exasperation, the call center woman asked, "What do you want me to do?"
"I want you to do get up out of your chair, walk across the room to Tony's office and ask him to talk to me." Finally, I threw in that I write for The New York Times, and I have documented this file from inception. I'm going to write about it.
The call center managed to get Tony to turn off his voice mail and take my call.
I explained that this is not your ordinary short sale, that my seller wants to pay them back. But also, the buyer is going to cancel if we can't get a short sale approval by next Tuesday. That's the 60-day deadline. And if we don't close, the seller is going to stop making payments, which means Bank of America will end up with this property in foreclosure, earning fifty cents on the dollar, if that.
Tony said to me, and I quote, "If it goes to foreclosure, it goes to foreclosure. My job is to process short sales." He promised to look through the file, follow-up on incoming correspondence from two weeks ago (which I picture lying in a mountain of fax paper on the floor in some closet) and call me back today. He didn't call back.
Well, you know what Tony? You aren't doing your job. You should be ashamed of yourself. You're costing your employer at least $100,000 by refusing to process a file that is complete and in front of your nose. If shareholders knew, they'd dump stock.
It's a shame that such apathy exists at the Bank of Opportunity.
P.S. I have to edit this post because I've been getting too many calls from people who haven't read the comments or haven't read the post following this. The fact is the short sale DID go through, at the eleventh hour.
Posted by 
Your story doesn't surprise me at all. I have some great asset managers, some of whom I actually have a real, on the phone conversation with once a week. They all say the same thing -- handling 750+/- files, buried in the paper, and depressed when they look at their voicemail because they know they can't possibly get back to everyone on everything. To have a short sale processor at BofA with such a jaded attitude is no big shocker. :(