3 Common Complaints of REO/Short Sale Buyers

The current real estate market is full of distressed properties and nearly 40 percent available properties fall under short sale and foreclosures. At the first sight, these properties may appear to be a great catch for potential buyers but the state say otherwise. Most of the buyers involved in short sales and other distressed properties have so many complaints about the process. Every Menifee realtor has a list of clients distressed with overall transaction process. There are lots of issues associated with these properties and this article will discuss some of the most common complaints of buyers in these transactions.

Never Ending Escrows

Time is one of the most important concerns of potential home buyers and they want the process to end up within expected period. Most of the first-time buyers expect the house hunting process to be the longest and rest of the process is expected to be closed quickly.

But this is not the case with distressed properties and they usually take few days to even few weeks in closing. There are a lot of supervisory approvals and investor involvement included in the overall process which makes it time consuming. Moreover, there’s a lot of difference when it comes to dealing with individual sellers and banks.

A short sale may even take up to 8 months in completing the transaction and that too after seller has agreed to the contract. It is important to keep these extended timelines under consideration and deal with your mortgage broker accordingly.

Postponements and Extending Deadlines

Most of the short sale transactions suffer from last minute postponements and extensions. There are enormous reasons out of which these cancellations and postponements occur. It is quite common to have cancellation if the bank is not ready to sell the property as short sale. They have endless reasons to reject every offer and sometimes their reasons are note even justified.

The best practice to handle these delays is to stay flexible in your plans of moving into the house. Never initiate processes like home inspections, appraisal and similar process before getting approval from the bank.

Delayed Response from Bank

Another irritating issue associated with short sales and foreclosures is the delay from Bank in returning to the offer or any queries. Generally, normal real estate transactions takes few days or weeks before you know the output but in case of short sales, banks may not even responds properly in months.

The problem arises when you like the property very much and are willing to make appropriate payment at the earliest. But, you can only control your efforts and not that of the banks’. It is advised to continue your house hunt until you have a solid deal in front of you. Moreover you can always back out of the transactions even after the approval from bank.

If you are planning to purchase one of these distressed properties, make sure to remain patient and pro-active in dealing with all the processes involved in the transaction.