We took the listing for this Short Sale October 22, 2009. We closed July 6, 2012. It was a non-stop fight for 2 years, 8 months and 15 days. So, as of July 6, 2012 this 2 bedroom/2 baths condo unit in MG on the Halifax (former Marina Grande on the Halifax) is sold to the investor.
Our previous record was a gorgeous 3 bdr/3 baths condo in Cinnamon Beach, Palm Coast. (see The War & Peace of Short Sale and Terri, I Miss You, Too). I do not want any more records.
What started as a simple short sale with Chase as Servicer and Freddie Mac as investor, turned into a short sale nightmare for close to 3 years. We have submitted and resubmitted about a dozen times, had done 6 BPO and 2 appraisals by State certified appraisers…
The worst was that they never negotiated. You submit all the paperwork, they demand every conceivable document for their file, and then they would close the case.
Why? No explanations.
Then, finally there was a negotiator called Tia, and she called me to tell me that she was going to close the case, and she said it was because they did not agree to the price.
So, what price would have been approved? She said $90K. The Buyer was willing to go to $90K right away…
No, we can’t do it this way. They have to close and we have to resubmit, but if we resubmit with $90K it would be acceptable.
So, they closed the case, we resubmitted with $90K, the whole 9 yards with paperwork, they send again the agent to do BPO, the guy comes with crazy number, and it is closed again.
We contest the BPO, they get the appraisal, which supports our contract price, fine, and negotiator Stacy Parrish sends us a letter that the price we submitted was acceptable and all she needed were couple of updated documents for her file and we need to get it to her by the end of the day on October 11, 2011, and we complied, and the negotiator told our team that she got the paperwork and we were fine. Couple of days later the Seller forwarded me the letter from Chase signed by the same Stacy Parrish on October 10, 2012 stating that she was cancelling the request for short sale for… not sending them the required documents (see Case of Severe SSS (Short Sale Sabotage).
You would think that this was Stacy’s mistake and she would apologize, once we tell her, but don't be naïve. Stacy never took the call or returned the call or responded to the e-mail. Her supervisor did not return the call, either. The Customer Service said “sorry” but you will now have to resubmit again and, hopefully, get another negotiator assigned. We did, and then get another incompetent employee.
I never thought Chase had so many incompetent people. We reached to Chase Executive customer service people, and they would call on our behalf to the negotiators and then would call us every week to report on the progress. They apologized, but those bastards who acted like morons never did.
I remember one negotiator insisting that BPO had more validity that the appraisal done by a certified state appraiser.
It felt like a contest, where the goal of negotiators was to come up with the way to stall the short sale. Every freaking pretext was fine as long as they could close the case as a result. Even if it was the most stupid one.
I got to brass at Freddie Mac, and the response was “deal with Chase”. They did not want to be bothered.
The funny thing was when Chase negotiators start blaming the Seller. One of those bright individuals blamed the Seller that they did not make any payments to Chase for 2 years. Yep, but they did not expect those bright individuals to be processing the short sale for over two years. Every time we would resubmit, we were assured that it is expedited, and we will have the answer very shortly. Until we were getting the same crap from yet another negotiator after negotiator.
What was the reason to waste the time of so many paid employees? What was the reason to never negotiate, and just keeping cancelling the case again and again? What was the reason to never tell us what the Investor wanted, instead saying that the offer was not approved?
I do not have the answer. I don’t think there is the answer. Acting stupid does not require logic, does not require sanity or reason.
We finally closed. It was a huge sigh of relief for us, the Seller, the Buyer, hanging in for nearly 3 years, and for the excellent negotiators from Johnson & Johnson Attorneys, Joanne and Dara. They managed not to lose sanity dealing with it on a daily basis. Kudos to them. I would have shot myself…
It feels like Freddie did not want to do a short sale, and we still finally beat them to it.
Why would they start if they did not want to finish?
P.S. Need to check Guinness Book of Records. Maybe they were trying to get there? Hmm….
Photos by Sheffield Tiger and epicharmus via Flickr.com
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