We read the horror stories everyday on Active Rain about REO agents who don't answer their phones or return emails.  Yet fortunately every once in a while we run into an agent who exudes true professionalism and it reminds you of how real estate deals are supposed to go.

This morning my buyers and I went to closing on an REO property in West Springfield.  When I saw the name of the listing agent on the MLS I thought this is a name I know from Active Rain, Stacy Magid of Coldwell Banker Elite.  When I submitted the offer I told her we were under the gun to get a ratified contract as my buyers were working with a relocation company.  Even though she thought the bank would take days to get back to us, we had incredibly fast responses from the asset manager and though we had some small glitches, okay maybe not so small, along the way we ended up closing THREE days early!

Our first glitch was the day the buyers, a home inspector and I opened up the door to hear the sound of running water.  If there had been a camera on you would have seen 4 adults slowly creeping into a house, eyes darting about, looking for the source of the running water.  We found it pouring out of the ceiling in the utility room.  The home inspector went to turn the water main off while I grabbed my cell phone to call Stacy.  As everyone knows when you are buying an REO you are buying it as is, but since we hadn't been the ones to turn the water on we asked whether this really wasn't an issue for the bank to resolve.

Within days Stacy had approval from the bank to repair the water leak and when we went back to check we found shiny new copper pipes where once there had been a broken whole house filter.  Yesterday as we pushed for a pre-weekend settlement we discovered that the original earnest money check made out to the REO title company had never been cashed.  Now we won't get into the violations surrounding escrow accounts but after a few quick phone calls Stacy came up with a solution that worked so that we could get to closing today.

So I want to pass on a big thank you to Stacy as an example of how REO transactions should work; agents who answer their phone, respond to email messages and solve problems instead of hoping that they will get their commission check no matter how often they ignore you.