The world of real estate is very challenging these days. Short sales especially. As if the short sale process is not frustrating and mysterious enough to buyers we don't need to add additional confusion to the whole situation by throwing strange wrenches into the works.
Case in point. Clients of ours put a full price offer on a short sale. Short sale offer is approved by seller and sent off to bank. Several days later our clients call to inform me that they saw the home listed on Zillow.com for $5,000 less than their full priced offer. Confusion abounds. I check our MLS and indeed, the price was dropped by $5,000, although it's status is AWC. I call the listing agent to find out what is going on. Listing agent tells me that they have an "automatic price reduction" function programmed into all of their listings and it just so happened that the day we submitted our offer the "automatic price reduction" function kicked in. However, the agent said we could write an addendum to our original contract reducing the bid price by $5,000. Which we did.
In another short sale transaction we are involved in, different clients, the listing agent miscalculated the bottom line net amount that the bank would accept, by $3,000. Now, we have done dozens of short sale transactions ourselves and have never been off by more than a couple of hundred dollars from the net amount the bank would accept. We usually just find a title expense that can be cut or reduced or we contribute part of our commission to cover it. But $3,000! Come on. And the agent had the gall to ask if our client wouldn't mind increasing their offer by said amount, stating that it would definitely make the offer more appealing to the bank. Well, my client's answer was no of course, they're sticking with their original "full price" offer.
My point here is this, don't make things worse because you're not on top of things. It is hard enough to keep buyer's engaged in the arduous battle that is a short sale. Adding confusion more confusion to the whole ordeal only makes our job as the buyer's agent that much more difficult.
Thank you.
For additional information about short sales, bank owned home in Phoenix, Scottsdale, or Anthem AZ click here.
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