Another Bellingham foreclosure tale.

Another Bellingham foreclosure tale.

It must have been six months ago now that my clients put in an offer on a home that was listed as a short sale. The home was listed for $260,000, our offer of $250,000 was accepted by the seller and had to be approved by the lender. Well, after 2 1/2 months of waiting my clients decided to walk. After talking with the listing agent about this listing, I came to find out the same thing had occurred with two other offers.

Several months go by and I get a call for my client one day telling me that they have seen the home they tried to purchase on a foreclosure web site for $211,000. So I started to investigate, with the help of the original listing agent I found the lender who owned the property and without much trouble I was able to actually talk to a human being. Yes the home had been foreclosed on. No the home was not on the market yet and no price had been determined as of yet. Everything had been turned over to third party REO department of another company. After contacting them they had told me the name of the listing agent who would be dealing with the property. I contacted that listing agent who said they had not decided on a price yet and it would be on the market in a few weeks. I asked him to please contact me as soon as it was on the market as I had client ready to purchase the property.

Luckily for my client I was going through the hot sheets when I saw the property had comeback on the market at $225,000. We immediately wrote an offer that was excepted very quickly. Due to many circumstances the deal was not easy to close, but after several months it finally did. My client is now happy owner of home and they saved $25,000,

Here's the part I don't understand. Why he did the lender not accept our offer on the home for $25,000 more, when it was being sold under short sale. Instead they foreclosed on the property. They ruined the previous homeowners credit by foreclosing and they cost themselves $25,000 plus the holding costs of the property for at least a several months.

Does anybody have any ideas why lender's do this? It worked out great for my client but not for the people who lost their home or the lender for that matter, go figure.