Coming Soon....Top Secret Interview With A Short Sale Negotiator!

Reserved Parking For "The Lovely Wife"...TLW...ROAR!

Hun...

I don't suppose you'd let me use sound effects when "The Negotiator" gives us answers we don't want to hear? :)

TLW...ROAR!

BB,

This should be a good one if you can get all the details worked out.

Bryant - I am reallllllllllly excited about the opportunity to interview The Negotiator!!  He said he could answer "any question" that was asked, and I've got already got a list started!

Here are my questions

1) How many files do they typically have waiting to be reviewed?  How many files can they review in a week?

2) What are the biggest mistakes (top 5)  they see real estate agents make when working with them trying to negotiate a short sale?

3) What is the most ridiculous short sale scenario have they seen come across their desk?

4) How to they choose their BPO agents?  (I want to know why some are from out of area)

BB, very cool. I remember when I worked for the hospital we went to a meeting where an X health insurance claims processor spoke to us. She talked about the 3 inch rule. They measured the stack of claims to be processed, anything over 3 inches was thrown out. Yes that was years ago, however....

Congrats on the interview, BB and Wendy!  That's fabulous!

1)Why do negotiators ask for super-fast 48 hour responses to their requests for documents (updated financials, paystubs, bank statements, etc), when the lenders won't honor the [usually reasonable] timeline established in the purchase contracts and short sale addenda?

2)We real estate agents would LOVE to price our short sale listings at a price that will be suitable to the lender. Sometimes, even while we do our best to use market data for pricing the house, the lender will counter-offer with a completely unreasonable price, to an offer that was well supported by the current market.  Why won't these lenders let us get a "preapproved" selling price, based on their own BPO efforts, so we can bring to the marketplace an "APPROVED Short Sale"?

3)Do the lenders require a borrower to be delinquent on their mortgage before considering a short sale? (I've had one deal where the seller was current the entire time, and their lender approved it, with no payback or deficiency note)

4)What's wrong with email communication? Or, better yet, what's wrong with calling the real estate agent to provide regular status updates on the file?

5)What's a typical "day in the life" of a negotiator?  And, why is the turnover of these folks seemingly so high?

Thanks for asking these questions on my behalf.  Feel free to re-word them, as you see fit.

Wow. Seems we have a lot of questions. But the comments above me have pretty much covered everything I wanted to know. I just have one other question. Are you gonna go all 007 and modify the voice of this expert?

Yeah, I know. That's me, Always the one with the really professional questions. =P

Bryant, I'll look forward to this but with some caveats.  I've dealt with completely different negotiators from the same institution.  Different banks with different procedures, etc.

Please ask this, "In deficiency states, like Mi, do they always go after the seller who sells short?

What I have read on the IRS web site is that they can do a 1099 or go after the deficiency judgement but not both.

How do they choose which to do?

Do they always do one or the other?

Will they garnish wages if the seller who lost his job, lost his house, eventutually gets a job?

BB - I too have many questions for them. Eric had a great first question in his comment. I also can see that different lenders have different procedures.

OK, I am in on this one. The questions seem to be fairly comprehensive and I am sure you have your list.

Hi BB - I look forward to this interview.  Many of the things I have wondered have already been addressed in comments above, but one thing I do wonder:

It seems that we can send in an email and never even be sure that it is received.  I know they often have huge caseloads, but we are sometimes left with the feeling that our communications drift off into some vaccuum in cyberspace.  I'm sure this causes some agents to just keep pestering the negotiator, simply increasing the load on him or her and slowing everything further.

Could they at least have some sort of automatic response that shoots back an email that says something like:  "I have received your email and will respond as quickly as I am able to, considering the large number of emails I receive daily."  At least we would then know we are in the loop and we would also have evidence to show our clients that we are, indeed, working on their file.

BB - I really can't wait to hear what he has to say. There are some great questions above, but I do want to add my own 2cents questions:

Do negotiators allow for concessions, like buyer's closing cost, third party negotiator, lawyer fees, 2008 R.E taxes owed?

Why does the net amount differ from one short sale approval letter to another when it involves the same  property?

Why are short sale approval letter sometimes so vague in their description when mentioning/or not the cancellation of the promissary note?

I'll come back and post some more if something pops into my brain :)

Ooooooooooo this should be a good one!  I can't believe you got a negotiator to agree to this, awesome!  Hopefully it will help make their job better!

Hi BB - I have one more question to add.  This occurred to me when I was commenting on a post by Wendy.  Your negotiator might not be able to answer this one, but here goes:

The approval letters from B of A (and perhaps others) reserve the right to seek a deficiency judgment after accepting the short sale amount, which already makes no sense to me.  Then it goes on to warn the sellers that they will receive a 1099 and the sellers may have to pay taxes on the deficiency amount (forgiven debt).  So if the sellers pay tax on that amount and if the lender then seeks a deficiency, will they reimburse the seller for the taxes paid?

This is full of so many contradictions:  forgiven?  Not really forgiven?  Sort of forgiven unless I change my mind?  Taxable as "forgiven", but maybe not forgiven? 

Wonder if I can still add a question:

Why, oh why, won't the banks tell us how much they are willing to take? It would be so much easier to list a home at the bank's asking price and get the sales approved, instead of playing this dumb guessing game. Bank approved short sales sell a lot better and faster!