The latest REALTOR magazine has an editorial in the Voices section talking about "sidestepping Short Sales". It inspired me to start thinking about why it takes so long to get answers from banks that are involved in short sales and why it takes months to get a decision.
The solution for the banks seems so simple to me. I picture a desk in the lenders' office piled to the ceiling with folders for short sales. I used to manage large school picture photo labs. Every year we got busy at the beginning of the school year. I simply hired enough people to process and print the film and mail it out to the students' families. Without the right number of people doing the jobs, my desk would have looked like the desks in the loss mitigation office of the bank... piled high to the ceiling with cans of unprocessed film. If that was the case, I would have been receiving calls and receiving letters from disgruntled customers. After a while, as the piles of film expanded, I would no longer be able to even answer the calls. And if I did, I probably couldn't find the right can of film to process to satisfy the customer. Furthermore, if I was receiving letters, they would be getting lost as well, angering more people. Pretty soon the competing photo companies would be putting me out of business.
I haven't been inside the offices of any loss mitigation clerks but I visualize that that is exactly what is happening. The piles of folders probably just keep growing as the economy worsens. In addition, Realtors stop showing the short sale houses because of the uncertainty of the process. Now the banks' financial picture is getting worse because the owners are no longer making their mortgage payments and the houses are not getting sold. It's a vicious cycle and the simple solution is to hire the right number of people, extend their hours, and delegate jobs to reduce the piles and start the money flowing into the banks and satisfying customers again. Once this starts, Realtors will begin showing these houses again and the inventory in the banks' portfolios will shrink.
Seems like a pretty simple solution to me. But then I'm just a self employed businessman/Realtor; what do I know?
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