Documentation is paramount especially in short sale transactions. The customer service part in short sales has to do with caring for your sellers and keeping the buyer agents informed as to the process of the short sale. 
But brokers and agents need to to understand that while making your calls, emails and texts to your clients is appreciated people in a stressed out situation like going through a short sale can easily forget what transpired during a phone call. Some sellers and buyers may be so stressed out that they may claim you did not call them when you did.
We document everything. Every email, every phone call and every correspondence not only with the banks but also with the buyers agents and the sellers. When some short sales drag on for over a year and going through several buyers there are times when your sellers are just going to be besides themselves. They want to move on with their lives and the short sale process appears to be that one thing that keeps them from moving forward. This creates a lot of stress for all involved.
We had one listing where the buyers' agent called us every day and would yell and scream about why it was taking so long. Mind you, it was 14 days into the short sale that she started calling on a daily basis. Milet would listen to her ranting and raving. Then the same day, the agent would email me that no one is giving her updates and no one is communicating with her! HELLO!!! But the calls were documented.
- There are times when you are sending out update emails and those emails may get stuck in the sellers' spam box or junk mail box.
- There are times when you might be leaving messages on their cell phone but the messages don't get to them because of cell phone tower issues or just a crappy cell phone carrier.
- There are times when you may even be talking to your clients in person and the next week they don't remember a word of that conversation.
Most of the time your short sale sellers will be very appreciative of your hard work and smart effort in getting them a best case scenario in a short sale approval but then again, some sellers may not be appreciative of you for anything you do and have a short term memory. This is part of life.
So protect yourself. If you are a broker have a policy that your agents document all correspondence no matter how small it may be.
We use Google Documents so they can be easily accessed by any agent from any computer and Nestor our broker can look over the notes at any time to make sure everyone is in compliance.
When our listing manager, receptionist or Nestor or myself call a seller the time of the call is noted and this is then put into the sellers' google document tracking file.
- When someone sends an email, that is confirmed and placed into their file.
- When they come over to the office a note is placed in their tracking file.
Our phone system tracks the calls and transcribes voice mail into text. It tracks inbound and outbound calls.
In the state of Florida you can not record conversations without both parties consent however you can record voice mails and use them as evidence.
All correspondence with the lenders, their customer service department, their legal department, their loss mitigation department; is all placed in the sellers' tracking file. We use evidence of correspondence many times especially when lenders say we did not call them or something like that. We can pull up time, date and length of call. We can also give names because our office policy is to get the name of every person no matter how insignificant to the deal that person may seem to be and then document the names and what they said.
We just had a seller save her house from foreclosure last week because we had recorded voicemails from her negotiator and had evidence that the judge needed to hear and see. The negotiator claimed she did not know the house was on the auction block but we have her using that as an intimidation tactic in a voice mail the night before the auction. I don't think any judge would be too pleased to hear something like that here in Florida.
Document, document, document!
Call your Wellington Short Sale Agents- Nestor Gasset and Katerina Gasset at 561-753-0135 to find out about your foreclosure options.
IMPORTANT DISCLOSURE:
*Seek competent legal counsel and tax advice for any real estate transaction. International Properties and Investments , Inc. is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender. Even if you accept this offer and use our service, your lender may not agree to change your loan. If you stop paying your mortgage, you could lose your home and damage your credit. *
Copyright © 2011 By Katerina Gasset, All Rights Reserved.*Are You Documenting Your Short Sale Communications?*
Comments(62)