Here's a Buyer Who Cut Out the Short Sale Listing Agent

Interesting, it makes me want to ask a lot more questions...

This is very interesting. I would imagine that the buyer that did this was very savvy though. Negotiating through a short sale with a bank isn't always the easiest thing to do. Great post

As I have always said Elizabeth, with short-sales, the bigger the circle of light, the larger the perimeter of darkness:-)  

You have posed a question I have wondered about. . .If a short-sale listing agent considers their client only the seller, and not the bank.  Then would having an unrepresented buyer going directly to the bank, be interferring with an agency relationship?  

I realize the bank doesn't come into the picture until buyer and seller are in agreement with an offer.  However, the bank can throw a very big monkey wrench into the transaction if another buyer is going around agents, and directly to the bank.  Because short-sales are written subject to bank approval, they are a very important third party with an interest in the property. At the end of the day, a buyer and seller can't close a short-sale without the bank's participation, no matter what the buyer and seller have agreed to.

Elizabeth - Does the seller really care at all what the price is?  All they likely want to do is get out from under the responsibility of that upside-down house.  I think it is as you say, a combination of things, which comes together to make an offer "Just right."  Because ultimately, the bank will need to do a  yay or a nay.   I wouldn't encourage any serious buyer to go to a bank directly.  Heck, if they knew what agents for buyers and sellers go through to get banks to settle on a short-sale, their brains would probably feel like they had been spun in a centrifuge:-)  But there may be a few unenlightened souls which would try.

Elizabeth, how interesting!!  I have to admire the tenancity of the buyer in the article. 

Re the post discussions of buyers/non-Realtor agents going directly to banks, I get what Elizabeth is saying.  The seller still has the INITIAL say as to whether or not they will sell it or stay and continue to pay the mortgage.  In this particular case, the tenacious buyer in the article would've never gotten the house if the seller decided not to sell after all.  It sounds like this particular seller's agent was busted for not presenting reasonable offers to the bank who has the FINAL say.  I wonder if he/she are still practicing because that is clearly unethical and a breach of fiduciary duty to the seller.

GREAT POST!