Okay. You guys have inspired me to share my latest Short Sale experience.
This was as clear cut a hardship case as you have ever seen.
FACTS:
- Wife is in the military .. was sent overseas
- Husband's mother became ill (no insurance) - they had to help out
- Husband lost his job
- ALL of this was documented.
- Countrywide was the only lender involved.
We received 3 offers ($340K, $310K and $295K) which we submitted. I went through 7 weeks of calling to their loss mitigation dept every Monday and Thursday. During each call I had to listen to the same prerecorded message and go through a lengthy interrogation to explain who I was, after which they would ask "would you mind if I put you on hold for 2-5 minutes while I read through the notes?"
- At first my file was "not urgent enough" - the sale date is too far off.
- When the sale date approached ... I ended up having them "postpone the sale date to consider the offers".
- They assigned me a negotiator, who held it for a couple more weeks
- The negotiator finally called to inform me that "Investors" wanted $339K (the $340K offer had walked away from the deal just 10 days prior). I don't blame them, they held on for 13 weeks - much longer than I would have held out in a market flooded with opportunities.
- When I let the negotiator know that we had it sold if they would have just come back 2 weeks sooner ... her response was "yeah okay, who do you have interested in the property now?"
- I offered it to the $310K and the $295K but neither budged.
- It sat a month until the next offer and when I submiited it, I learned that we were back in the general sea of files... and we were no longer assigned the negotiator and we had a new sale date.
- I got 2 new offers at $300K and one at $290K (which all seemed good to me - given the new comps we had to go with).
- Extremely long story short ... I went through more of the same including: calls and more calls, another negotiator - who transferred me to a third negotiator ...
- We finally got both sides to agree to a $300 k price.
- When they did the inspection, they found a hole in the roof.
- The buyer said they would take the house for $295K (considering the roof situation).
- The bank responded - $300k is the bottom line
- Buyer walked
- Property foreclosed
- Bank had to go in and fix the roof
- If all of that was not enough... HERE IS WHERE I WAS BLOWN AWAY ...
- They have now relisted at $279K with a repaired rook and paying full comission.
Maybe I'm missing something, but something is not right with this picture.
In this Reader's Digest version of an VERY long and grueling story there are at least 8 buyers who were made to wait for several weeks (or months) and an equal number of frustrated realtors (plus 1, myself) and a devastated seller whose credit is gone thanks to a terrible short sale system that needs attention and repair.
Michael Hernandez, Realtor
RE/MAX PowerPro Realty
954-668-1703
mhernandez@remax.net
www.BrowardAgent.com
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