Will Your Burbank Realtor Follow Up Properly To Ensure Success On Your Short Sale?
Burbank CA - We got a short sale approved yesterday
. This file was a fiasco from day one. Despite the incompetence we suffered, we got the file approved thru persistent follow up. The first lender handling the file was incredibly incompetent. Their short fax number didn't work. We mailed the short sale package to them and they lost it. We mailed it again and they finally got it.
We would call, e-mail, and fax the short sale negotiator. He wouldn't get back to us for 2-3 weeks at a time. (This was despite us calling and e-mailing every single day.) We finally got him to call back when we threatened to go to the press with the story.
This incompetency went on for several months. Unfortunately the first buyer got impatient and walked. Fannie Mae was the actual owner of the loan. They eventually fired the first company as the servicer and hired another company. This new company was also fairly incompetent.
Here is what was shocking! The company is a subsidiary of one of the largest information technology companies in the world. The subsidiary's phone lines didn't even work properly. The automated prompts went in a circle. Just goes to show how technologically advanced they are!
Finally we were about to get an approval. The short sale negotiator calls us. "I can approve the file if you do this and this", she says. We make the changes and send them to her. A few days later she calls back. "You need to net us the same amount of money and raise the sales price", she tells us.
She explained that the file had Mortgage Insurance and they their approval. We talked to the title company and figured out how to make the changes. Fortunately everything worked out ok. We raised the price and had the seller pay the same amount of the buyer's closing costs. Yes, we had to get a little creative. Please note: Everything was completely legal and ethical.
Here is the point of this crazy story. Short sales are unpredictable. The lenders pile more and more files on each staff person. In my opinion, these staff are overworked and underpaid. Fortunately most short sales are not as bad as this one. If you are persistent and know what you are doing, even the bad short sales can be approved.