Here's the answer.

Breaking News!! FirstClose has formed a strategic alliance with America's Home Rescue to provide technology services designed to significantly streamline the pre-foreclosure and Short Sale process. (edit/delete)

FirstClose has formed a strategic alliance with America's Home Rescue to provide technology services designed to significantly streamline the pre-foreclosure and Short Sale process. The alliance provides unique benefits to homeowners, real estate agents, and lending institutions alike.

America's Home Rescue provides advanced training for real estate and mortgage professionals to learn the precise manner of submitting and closing Short Sale transactions to help homeowners avoid foreclosure. America's Home Rescue has trained over 12,000 real estate professionals and is working exclusively with FirstClose to help automate documents, enhance communication, and fulfill settlement services for all parties involved.

In addition to providing lenders with one stop access to the leading vendors for flood determinations, appraisals, and title work, FirstClose has developed proprietary software that automates key components of the Short Sale document submission process to the nation's largest lenders. Companies like Wells Fargo, Chase Bank, and Bank of America require specific documents to be submitted by the homeowner in order to complete the short sale transaction. It can be extremely cumbersome to collect and organize all documents in the precise manner required by each financial institution. As such, FirstClose has developed sophisticated software that enables real estate agents to create, print, and upload all of the required documents for each lending institution, all at the touch of a button. Once all required documents have been collected, the agent simply uploads the documents into the FirstClose system, where they are stored, organized, and processed through quality control checks and balances. Lenders subsequently receive e-mail notifications alerting them when new docs have been accurately submitted.

FirstClose is also developing software that helps homeowners and lenders find real estate agents that have been trained in Short Sale transactions by America's Home Rescue. Helping homeowners and lenders find qualified agents and streamlining the document submission and communication processes are the first steps in a series of technology services FirstClose and Americas Home Rescue are providing to the mortgage lending and real estate industries.

"Part of the backlog in the loss mitigation process and a significant contributor to why so many homeowners are ultimately going to foreclosure is due to a breakdown in communication between borrowers and lenders," said Stacy Spickes, President, America's Home Rescue, LLC. "Training everyone involved and making communication more efficient helps homeowners and lenders while reducing the number of properties that go into foreclosure."

"The industry is in desperate need of a process to help reduce the number of foreclosures and we believe our systems and services can have a dramatic impact on the economy." Tedd Smith, CEO of FirstClose

I try to avoid short sales all together.  Either on the buy or sell side because the banks take so long. 

I learned to go to the CEO, President, VP of the loss mitigation company.  They don't get paid if it goes to a foreclosure.  Research on Google to find the big guns and get e-mail address, faxes and voice mail.  Send them letters via Fed Ex if you can't reach them any other way.  I also learned to call the main office, ask for the CEO and I usually get an assistant who will help.  You have to impress upon them, that there is a short window of opportunity before the buyer walks and the next one thru the door will offer less.  In my case, it worked because I was dealing with a bank, not a mortgage company.

Simply put - they are just overwhelmed !

I have lost a few buyers because of this, I mean think about, our market averaged a 1% price drop every month last year - so you figure our median home price is right near $500,000 - so that is about $5,000 a month, ok 3 months down the road, its now worth $15,000 less! I have to go back in and start all over???? Just crazy. but hey - I love being a Realtor !

Aloha, and have a great day

Lance Owens (RS)

(808) 936-8383

Lance@KonaHomeTeam.com

http://www.konahometeam.com/

Aloha Kona Realty Inc.

78-6740 Alii Drive

The worst one Ive had to deal with is COUNTRY WIDE> I have not heard of a successful short sale with Country wide yet. ive had pretty good luck with smaller lenders. But the bigger ones are tough. And LOTS of work.

I would avoid them if I could, but I feel they are symptom of today's market.  I totally agree with Jeanmarie about going straight to the top.  I just had to do what she described to get the deal completed.

Good evening Aaron - a lot of my buyers have gotten tired of waiting for answers on the short sales and are avoiding them now.

I too try to avoid them but when a buyer wants them, I do warn them that it isn't going to be fast and painless!

America's Home Rescue is working with the heads of loss mitigation for the major national lenders and they are refining their processes very quickly, especially with our help in making them realize what an Agent goes through to make a Short Sale happen.  The days of calling loss mitigation will soon be gone.  After having discussions with the CEO's, it has become more apparent to us, on behalf of all Agents in America, that the lenders are very disconnected from our world as Agents and don't realize the value we bring them and how much of a necessity it is for us to be involved.

America's Home Rescue will be speaking to leading policy makers for the various committees with NAR to make further enhancements to the pre-foreclosure dubacle this country is in at the moment.  Some of the major brokerages throughout the United States are considering using America's Home Rescue as their primary source of pre-foreclosure and Short Sale education, partly due to the relationships they have built with lenders over the past 6 years.

Stay tuned!

America's Home Rescue

www.ShortSaleSolutions.biz

This is the magic question Aaron! Banks are overwhelmed and the poor guy with files piled high on his desk is buried.  I heard that they bonus on closed deals and really tend to work on the clean ones that make sense and have a good agent behind it!

There have been multiple offers on several short sales that I have listed and represented buyers on. I really think it comes down to educating the buyer and the listing agent staying in contact with the sellers agent and lender with updates.

Short sale process MUST be streamlined - It is NOT Short but a long process. Definately takes persistance and patience.

BOB

Aaron,

One reason i have found short sales to take so long for approval is that lots of banks are very incompetent and lazy. They tend to lose documents and packages that are sent in. Some banks even "Purge" or throw away the file if not all documents are sent in together as one whole package. Even one document missing can result in you faxing the package all over again. Make sure that when you intitially contact the bank for a short sale that you ask them in detail exactly what documents they require, making note of the person you spoke to with their operator number. Also, keep in mind that you have to be somewhat threatening and firm with the banks to get an answer and sometimes, an expedited process. This i have found very useful:)  I hope you have found my comment to be somewhat useful in answering your question. Regards!