I'm sure we all have funny/sad/pathetic stories about our days in the short-sale trenches. Today, our team had another. With no word from the lender in 2 months in response to our officers, we put in still another call and hung in there for a good hour before a live person got on the line. Voila! It was actually the negotiator who had been assigned the transaction way back in December. We'd never actually talked to him and frankly, never thought we would. But there he was, at the other end of the line, friendly enough, saying that, in fact, he'd never seen the file, didn't even know he had it. Okay, we said, bear with us. We'll fill you in. The first three offers disappeared, but the fourth is still around, in fact went up $2000. An appraisal was in, so when can we have a response? When can we make a deal?
"Wait a sec, he said, I don't see the paper trail here. Where is it? The file's too thick." Well, our own file on this little house is 4 inches high. We quickly started ruffling through the pile, as he did. He gave up right away. "If it's not at the top, I can't help you. You need to re-send."
Okay, so that's how it works. First, the negotiator lacks a tracking system, so he doesn't even know he has a case in forward motion, and probably never would, despite our weekly calls to him, unless he'd picked up the phone (and why was that?...a mistake, probably!)
But it was obviously too much work to pull out the details. So many short sales, so little time over there at the bank. Tomorrow, we will dutifully resend and the paperwork will make its way back to the file and he probably won't even notice. We'll continue to call and, unless he mistakenly picks up the phone again, it will be to no avail and we'll eventually lose the remaining offer -- while the property silently, anonymously wends its way to foreclosure. By then, the file will be too heavy to pick up. Funny/sad/pathetic, right?
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