First-Time Home Buyer - Your Real Estate Agent Is Just As Frustrated As You!
I have a buyer who made an offer on a bank-owned property, after 3 days the Seller's Agent called Me and said; even though she had presented THREE offers to the bank, the bank put everything on hold!! No offers were being looked at, and the Real Estate Agent was told - NO FURTHER SHOWINGS OR OFFERS ACCEPTED! The bank told the agent; "We are working on something"!!

Understand First-Time Home Buyer -- Real Estate Agents Feel Your Pain & Frustration!

http://x288366.yourkwagent.com/atj/user/HomePageGetAction.do

YES YOU ARE SO RIGHT.THE BANKS ARE SLEEPING AND WAITING FOR THE FEDS HANDOUT I MEAN BAILOUT.THEY DON'T SEE US ANYMORE....YOUR SO RIGHT..IF I COULD WRITE THIS ANY BIGGER.Y O U A R E S O R I G H T........THE BANKS ARE LOOKING OVER YOUR HEAD.LADY I DO NOT WANT TO GET STARTED....THIS IS NOT FUN! WE GET OUT AND BUST OUR BUNS AND GET THIS....

Flowerchild,
It is a competetive market when properties are priced below market.The question is why do you keep losing these properties if you are bidding over, especially if you have been searching for a year and a half.Is it because you are not bidding high enough or is it because of the type of financing you are trying to secure? You might want to make sure you know the real reason. With Most of the foreclosures and short sales, the sellers are selling the property "as is" and if you are going with a government loan, it is very difficult to buy "as is". You might be beaten out because of buyers going cash or conventional financing.
If you are being beaten out by price and not type of financing, then you need to bump up the price.It is much faster of a process if you purchase a foreclosure versus a short sale.In regards to the short sales, they become more difficult because of the fact that the contract is contingent on a third party approval and there is usually a waiting time. So, if you are discouraged stay away from short sales!I have noticed that the process takes much longer if the seller does not have all his paperwork ready to go with all the proper information needed for the short sale.Therefore, you/your agent need to ask specific questions before you write an offer to purchase.With the short sale,the seller needs to be on his toes and has paperwork ready to go with the purchase offer. Seller/agent need to have a contact person to follow up with.If you are on a limited time frame to settle, the short sale might not be your best bet because it can tie you up.
There are some serious,motivated sellers out there and if you have a buyers agent representing you, you might want to also take other listings into consideration besides the short sales and foreclosures..Hope it works out for you...Donna

If it makes you feel any better I'll tell you this is the norm. Very frustrating for all parties. Lenders are pricing homes below market value and receiving multiple offers. Short sales are a nightmare and I stay away for the reasons you are talking about.
I work with government owned homes that are move in ready. Now we have a FREE 2 year home warranty and 3.5% closing cost will be paid for the buyer on the government owned homes. They are available in all areas of the US. Ask your agent about them.

A home that has gone through the foreclosure process and is back on the market would be a better focus for you. They are still great values and the prices are low. Once the lender has the property, they seems to be eager to get them off their books. As a lender, I find very few of my borrowers end up with the original short sale they have made an offer on. Almost 100% do not get the short sale and buy another great home at a great value.

Sally W. Hamby
Pine State Mortgage-Atlanta area

You are right. The market for first time home buyers is tough. You are competing with all cash investors for the best homes. There is word that more foreclosures are coming and that may lesson the current frenzy. Meanwhile, you need to be working with a deligent Realtor who knows what you are looking for and can jump on properties quickly. You may also need to be patient and wait for the right short sales. We are going to start seeing more of them and we can only hope the process will become more streamlined. Every bank handles short sales differently and each seller's situation is different. There are many variables involved, which means many ways for them to go wrong. But the majority of short sales are successful. It is usually a a long slog and takes enormous amounts of patience and trust.

This is exactly why I steer my clients away from short sales and foreclosures! Especially with the Nov. 30th deadline coming so soon! Most short sales take at least 90 days to respond - and time is running out for the turn around time to make it into your new home BY Nov 30th!
True I am not familiar with your market area; but I am sure that your agent can find properties that do fit your wish list and are not tied up with the banks trying to get all of the monies owed; so they are waiting out the offers!
Most buyers today are looking for the *deals*; so you have to make the hard decision - wait for the *deal*, or be able to take advantage of that $8000 tax credit!?

http://x288366.yourkwagent.com/atj/user/HomePageGetAction.do

If your offer is for a foreclosure/bank owned property, you have to be patient waiting for a response from the seller; although it depends on the area, you could receive a verbal acceptance within days of the offer.
As a buyer agent I will do all of the work it takes on both sides to make sure my client is adequately served once the offer is made.
You should consider highest and best offer to make sure the seller believes you are serious. The banks have a huge amount of work now that includes refinancing mortgages and it depends on the employee that is handling the offers for that property. Your offer should be serious and complete, otherwise it will end up in the "later" pile.

Honestly you don't really want to know the answer because it will get you sick. Without going into too much detail because i would have to put down too many realtor's how are taking these listings and don't know what they are doing. Make sure that the realtor that represents you is constantly checking on the statis of the deal with the bank directly, because it goes no where other wise. This is very sad to say this, but its true, many realtor rely on the attorney and the attorney's who have been in practice for 10 -30 years don't know the ins or outs about Short sales unless they ahve taken classes or seminars. Its alot of paper work from the begining to the end. Did you supply any paperwork from where your down payment is coming from ? A pre-approval is not good enough. I can list a whole bunch of more questions , like did you do your inspection before your offer ? Did you see a copy of the HUD1 statement that was turned into the lender ?Usually it takes about 3 to 6 Hud 1 statement to be redone before an agreement could be reached. Your realtor should be following each step of the deal and reporting it back to you. A typical short sales should not take longer than 60 days from when all of the paper work is turned in to the day to close unless someone has dropped the ball or has not followed up almost on a daily basis.
Good luck
Don Yosef Marcus GRI,ABR,CCEC,SRES
CENTURY 21 MB
CHICAGI & NORTHBROOK

Ben asked, "Why banks give all REO's to small number of agents that are clearly overwhelmed is a question I wish I knew the answer to as well."

My theory is "because these agents will take them." In general I find most of these listing agents do very little and know even less about the property. I could tell stories but it would be off-topic. A buyer of REO property needs an agent who knows how to get things done and is willing to do the work of both the listing and the selling agent.

We are having issues with the new appraisal rules here that have caused problems for Buyers and Sellers.
This news site offers some insight.
http://rismedia.com/2009-07-01/confronting-new-appraisal-rul…
In our sales meeting at Worth Properties this week we were told that these new rules of March hopefully will change soon.

'NAMB has taken an active stance against the HVCC since its introduction in March of 2008. “We urge Congress to pass H.R. 3044 as soon as possible to ensure that more borrowers will not be negatively impacted by this de facto rule,” stated Savitt. “In the period of time since its implementation, the HVCC has increased costs to consumers and decreased the quality of appraisals and has provided a level of uncertainty in an ailing housing market. Tens of thousands of consumers have already been robbed of their opportunity to enjoy historically low rates by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s rule.”

http://rismedia.com/2009-07-01/confronting-new-appraisal-rul…

In the meantime, make sure you have your agent comp property to make sure your time is not wasted looking at homes that are over priced or highly mortgaged.

I hope that helps!
Lisa Luplow, Realtor/Broker
Worth Properties
Nashville, TN

If you have been "searching" for over 1.5 years and have only made 3 offers and they were all on bank owned or short sale properties I am absolutely not surprised that you haven't gotten an offer accepted. What type of financing are you using? Teri's point below about cash buyers while valid we've had cash offers not get accepted on short sales because loss mitigators were looking for higher nets. Why banks give all REO's to small number of agents that are clearly overwhelmed is a question I wish I knew the answer to as well. But in this type of a market with this type of inventory available if you've only found 3 properties that fit your criteria in 18+ months there may be something in your criteria thats prevented you from being able to purchase too...

Tracy makes some good points... I would just add that it's important to remember that banks/lenders didn't get into the mess they are in by being particularly bright and demonstrating good management techniques. There is absolutely no logic to how they handle things.

All generalities are of course false, but there are a lot of "good deals" out there for buyers (first time or other) that are not REO or short sale. I would suggest you make offers on homes, not on foreclosures and REOs.

Hi Flowerchild,

It's a crazy world when dealing with banks. I wish I had good new for you. How did you submit 3 offers? Have any expired? Did you give an extension on the acceptance time period? Did you submit the deals on the bank's contract? Did you you use or get pre approved by their recommended loan agent? What if all get approved? There is a potential that you could be in contract to buy 3 houses but I wouldn't worry about that too much just slightly.

Hearing from the banks depend on the banks and the listing agents. In Richmond, I have noticed that a lot of properties are listed with a 925 area code and they seem to be randomly priced (or at least priced by someone who has not seen the property and is just running numbers from sales and tax records from a desk in some other county).

Short sales and bank owned properties are serviced by bank employees and not real estate professionals. Your contracts maybe sitting in a $18 an hour bank employee's inbox. They maybe out sick or attending a meetings and not motivated to do your deal, or any others. If it is a short sale then your offer maybe sent to an inbox waiting for debt collection and not sales.

The listing agent maybe listing hundreds of REO's and yours isn't their priority. I have noticed that most all cash deals magically close, but if there is a loan some listing agents are shameless enough to not bother to respond.

In world of short sales and REO's it truly is buyer beware. Good luck.