I suspect most baby boomers can name the 4 guys in The Beatles with more ease than recalling the 4 presidents at Mount Rushmore. In fact, I bet most people can name all of Santa's raindeer and each of the 7 dwarfs before they can tell you who is on Mount Rushmore. It's just a place, although a National Memorial, where parents drag their kids at least one lucky summer out of their lives.
Although mine never did. I had to catch Mount Rushmore on my way to Sacramento from Minneapolis. My husband went a different route when he drove out all those years ago, so he missed it. He made up for that on his October trip, and you can see those photos on this page. It's sort of a patriotic thing to do, to go to Mount Rushmore. It's just that it's in the middle of nowhere. But that's where some cools things are -- they're in the middle of nowhere, so you have to make a point to go there. Like Yellowstone National Park. Otherwise, you miss the boat.
I'll tell you who has missed the boat. The HAFA Certification people. Apparently, every Sacramento short sale agent has already been through the HAFA certification process and become a Certified HAFA Specialist or the agents just don't give a crap. I'm betting it's the latter. There are not very many of us real estate agents in Sacramento who has devoted a career to listing and selling short sales. Our Sacramento Board of REALTORS® had to cancel its HAFA class today due to low registration. And it was only forty bucks!
HAFAs are a PITA as compared to the stress level of other short sales. Yet, as a Sacramento short sale agent, one still must do what is best for the client. For some clients, that means doing a HAFA short sale. Some HAFAs are better than others. A Chase HAFA, for example, will take about 90 days for approval. A Bank of America / AMS HAFA short sale will make you wish you were instead strapped to Teddy Roosevelt's head in 90-degree heat with a chisel and hammer in hand.
I am closing another Bank of America HAFA short sale this week, presuming the HUD gets approved in time. We sent it to Equator yesterday. AMS says it can take 5 days to approve a HUD. This is another of those preapproved HAFA short sales. It was preapproved in spring. We submitted a full price offer in June. We saved zero time getting preapproved. Rather than hammer ourselves on our heads, it made more sense to submit the HUD when we had 5 days to spare. After all, we're talking about a crew over at AMS who didn't even know we had short sale approval until I sent them the letter.
I got the letter manually drawn by the AMS HAFA escalation team. Because time is precious. Because on a preapproved HAFA with a full price offer, waiting 90 days is insane, if not in violation of government regulations. If your agent is stuck on a HAFA, I suggest they try sending an email to escalations@hmp.adm.com or, it's a Bank of America HAFA, send a Tweet to BofA_Help. Beats banging your head back and forth in the doorway.
Photos: Mount Rushmore, Adam Weintraub, October 2011
Comments(4)