In today's world of residential sales you may find yourself waiting and waiting to get an answer on an offer from a seller and then approval from the bank. As a buyers agent, I submit the offer and hope to get an answer within a couple days or a week. The seller may be all in favor of the offer but may not have the $$ to pay off their mortgage. This is when we hope that the bank will agree to take less than the amount the current seller owes, also known as a short sale.
As a buyers agent, many times there is no reply from the owner. The listing agent may not give written feedback because the seller cannot agree unless the bank agrees to take less. In Ohio all offers must be presented to the owner. Many short sale listing agents do violate this law.
Suspicion quickly leads many agents and buyers to believe that their offer never was presented or it was shopped. If I as a buyers agent press for an answer, the listing agent could avoid me completely. This would not be ethical but it would take allot of time and effort to file an alleged ethics charge. If there is no violation then I really look like a fool, as well as having burned a relationship.
What to do! Your thoughts? Would you do anything different?
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Hi Kevin ... this is a great concern and a great topic too. In Illinois, we actually negotiate the contract price, terms etc. to an agreement that is actually ACCEPTED in writing by the owner/seller who is upside down on his mortgage. The acceptance is conditioned upon agreement of the lienholders to ALL negotiated terms, conditions and pricing. We get a copy of the signed contract with that "contingency" included. This assures that the contract was accepted by the seller. It assures that the lienholder eventually knows they have a real buyer with real terms. The lienholder approval functions like any other condition of the contract such as a mortgage contingency or home inspection. The buyer can even put a time frame on that contingency which provides incentive to get that completed in a reasonable time and allows the buyer to control how long they are willing to wait for the answer from the lienholder. They can always extend the time if it is not met, just like any other time-conditioned contract provision. I think the key here is educating the parties so that they really understand how this works keeping in mind that the lienholders are generally not going to reply fast. I usually explain to buyers who need to be into a home by a specified date that these properties may be great buys ... eventually ... but they do come with situations beyond anyone's control that might not allow them to close and occupy by any given future date. Ally