You got an email alert from Trulia to answer a question from May?
I'm thinkin Marissa is long gone and Trulia is a little slow getting their Alerts out or they are trying to increase Site Traffic..

Chris I hope Trulia is a little more timely with their alerts in the future as you gave a well written and informative response...nice job....Thumbs up for that and if Marissa was still around you'd deserve a Best Answer from her also IMHO.

Welcome to Trulia
Dunes

Hello, Marissa. I got an email alert from Trulia.com, giving me the opportunity to answer your question. I will, however, add that in response to your first sentence, my feeling is that it's inappropriate, unprofessional and risky in any number of ways to be giving out lockbox combinations to anyone other than a licensed agent.

You didn't mention if this is a Short-Sale or not but if this is a Short-Sale property, the house is still owned by the legal owner and that agent represents the owner's interests. My previous clients wouldn't appreciate that at all. I will assume your husband is not a licensed agent.

That being said I have two other observations with comments. Agents have no business sending buyers on wild goose chases, especially unescorted, on properties they're advertising as being for sale and then not returning their calls.

In answer to your question, specifically, if this is a Short Sale, there are a number of tasks that need to be addressed before a bank will approve a price, lower than the outstanding loan amount. If there are two lenders, this further complicates the process and adds additional time to the sale process.

Having completed a $600K Short-Sale last month, I can tell you that seller cooperation with all bank approval requirements is paramount. Sellers need to fill out all required paperwork, first. Most banks require a bonified offer to get the process on moving forward. An appraiser is assigned and then the process continues. There is a lot of follow up efforts required of the listing agent... faxes, emails, nonstop papertrails and many, many calls. There is really no way around it, unfortunately.

Banks are bogged down with 100s, maybe 1000s of Short Sale requests and mistakes and oversights can happen. A good listing agent has to continually monitor and follow up to nudge a final approval forward, all the way to the last day of closing. It's still in the banks hands throughout the entire process and they each have their own procedures and multiple tiers of decision-makers.

It can work out positively for the seller, even as a Short-Sale comes with it's own set of consequences. My last sale closed with numerous starts and stops and false alarms and it got done and my client was out of the property with very minimal closing costs. There you have it... I hope my response sheds some light on this process.

CHRIS EDWARDS, BROKER
EDWARDS ESTATES
BIG BEAR CITY
909.744.4220

Marissa,
Do yo really want to work with an like that.
Interview multiple real estate agents until
you feel comfortable with one.

Best Regards,

Jes Sierra, B.Sc.
Century 21 Beachside, Realtor®

you just need an agent that is on the ball and call the bank almost every day to get an answer.
we do bank and shortsales and always answer our phone up until 9 PM

We are finding that a lot of agents are advertising property for sale that are not ready to go on the market. What happens is these agents know that they are getting the listing and start advertising it before the bank sets the price. The bank won't set the price until they have three seperate sources for the value and this takes some time. Do, you end up knowing about the property but you can't do anything about it but wait. If I can be of any help in the future, please let me know.

The agent you talked to should not be giving you a lock box code and not offering to show you the property themselves. It sounds like the property is in the pre-listing stage. The agent knows he is getting the listing but doesn't know the price yet. If it was already listed, you should have no trouble finding out what the price is.

Banks are motivated to sell their properties but there is a process to listing a foreclosed property. The agent knows they are getting the listing days before they know what the price is going to be.

Let me know if you have any other questions.