Here we go

I don’t really know why I thought we would miraculously bypass going through the pains of a short sale. Maybe it’s because I had done so much research and figured I just knew everything there was to know. Maybe it’s because I didn’t think it would take all that long, even though I have heard the horror stories.

HA HA. Joke’s on me.

The timeline has gone a little something like this:

March 9, 2011: submitted short sale package to both lienholders.

March 13, 2011: realtors office called both lienholders to ensure they received packages ok. Second lienholder had, first lienholder stated items were missing in package. Resubmitted items they had mis-scanned.

March 18th, 2011: first lienholder stated package was in imaging and would be reviewed within 10 days.

March 25th, 2011: second lienholder approves short sale subject to first lienholder terms and conditions.

Fast forward. I don’t even know the dates anymore because originally I wasn’t going to blog about this. Instead of assigning the package within 10 days, the first lienholder gives us a massive runaround. We are told to wait 30-45 days for it to be assigned. We are told it would have been 10 days if everything had been there on the first attempt but since our package was incomplete then we have to go back in line. Which, I would understand, but then theoretically, if our complete package was there on March 18th (as opposed to March 9th) shouldn’t it still have been assigned to a negotiator within 10 days of March 18th?

Yeah? Notsomuch.

Then they closed out our file. Our realtor’s short sale negotiator just happened to be calling for one of her regular follow up calls and she discovered they closed out the file erroneously. She was able to get it reinstated.

Finally on June 13th they assigned it to a negotiator, almost a full 90 days after a complete package was acknowledged as received. The next day they pulled it from the negotiator because they claimed it was missing the listing agreement. Keep in mind, we were told on March 18th the entire package was there.

Listing agreement was sent immediately but then we were told we had to wait for it to go through their imaging process. What used to take 48-72 hours is now up to a whopping 7-10 business days!! No wonder nothing is getting done around there!

We called every few days to confirm the listing agreement was received, and finally on July 7th, 2011, we received confirmation the listing agreement was received. But……

Our financial documents were outdated. Unfortunately the file would not be moved back to the negotiator. Seriously? The negotiator didn’t notice that when they picked up the file the first time? My realtor’s short sale negotiator called and went round and round with the first lienholder about the fact that their imaging takes 2 weeks. By the time they image the documents then spend another 10 days to assign back to a negotiator they will be outdated again.

In the meantime, a new law has been passed that a bank has 90 days to complete the short sale process from the time a complete package is received. So in theory we would have been done on June 18th (albeit they lost the listing agreement that they originally acknowledged receipt of). I can see exactly where this is going right now. They are going to have to meet the new deadlines for new applications, and those of us with applications prior to the new date are going to sit even longer while we wait for them to pull their heads out of their you-know-where’s.

Here’s the situation with our buyers: these people are GOLDEN. She’s a doctor and he’s an officer in the military. They wrote an offer almost 15k above list price. They are putting 25% down. They asked for no closing costs to be paid by the seller/bank. They wrote the contract with NO appraisal contingency, which means if the house doesn’t appraise for the sales price they don’t care- they will pay the difference. My bank is just plain idiotic not to JUMP on this deal right now. What’s going to happen is the buyers are going to get sick of waiting (keep in mind, they wrote the contract February 19th I believe). They are going to walk and we are going to wind up taking an offer at or below list price, where the bank is going to be asked to contribute up to 6% in closing costs and oh yeah, if the appraised value comes in low then the bank will have to negotiate the price even lower.

Can someone PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE tell these banks to take a look at their process and figure out exactly why they can’t get the job done? All I’m saying is, LET ME AT IT!! I will come up with an efficient process where the customer service agents don’t have to defend themselves all day and can then be free to actually be courteous to the people calling in. Imagine that….

Stay tuned, things are definitely going to get more interesting from here.