Last week I helped my buyer client write an offer on a bank-owned, foreclosed property. We set the expiration of the offer at 5:00 Friday afternoon (last Friday). We wrote the offer on Tuesday (last Tuesday). The bank set the listing price. The bank should know what they are willing to accept for the property, right? This is not a short sale, so there should be MUCH LESS red tape to cut through to get the ball rolling, right?
That was my thinking when we wrote the offer.
Well, here it is, Tuesday, seven days after we made the offer. Two business days after the offer expired. The listing agent/team works exclusively with banks and warned me when I sent the offer that the banks don't look at offer expiration dates but that they (the listing agent/team) would respond to me as quickly as they could get the bank to respond.
Don't look at offer expiration dates?
Now I know the banks have mountains of paperwork these days between foreclosures that need listed, late mortgages that are going to sale, restructures, refinances, short sales, etc., etc., etc. I don't envy them at all. But that doesn't give them a right to make up their own rules as they go along!
My attorney friends tell me the banks don't want the houses - they would prefer to collect the money they loaned for the house instead. Well here is a perfectly good offer on one of the houses they don't want - and they have let the offer expire.
Unfortunately, my buyer really wants the house, so there's little we can do but wait. Withdrawing the offer won't get us the house, making a new offer will start the clock ticking all over again, and walking away won't get us the house. So we wait.
And wait.
And wait.
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