Is this a short sale listing? Did you perform/pay for inspections and an appraisal? Since you have been waiting the 3 months, I am assuming it was a short sale offer. And was your offer the first offer made on the property? It is actually commonplace for the listing agent / seller to continue to show and accept backup offers on the property while waiting for a response from the current lien holder(s) regarding short sale approval. Agents out there handle short sales differently as we have not seen mandated procedural requirements on the listing and marketing of this dominiating part of the market. It sounds like, in this case, the agent possibly may have taken the best offers in the pile and submitted those to the bank following short sale approval. Another possibility is that the BPO (broker price opinion / appraisal) came back higher than your offer.

If you are dealing with a short sale offer, I am hoping you have not yet come out of pocket for inspection/appraisal. And in either case above, the listing agent should have provided the reason for the denial of your offer. If the BPO came in high OR if they had other offers, they should have provided you with an opportunity to increase your offer to highest and best.

In this market it does not make sense to make a single offer and wait it out on a short sale. I suggest to my buyers that they make offers on multiple properties because at the end of the process many of these will either be bested by other offers, the short sale not approved or the property is foreclosed on (although foreclosure is beoming less and less). If you are making multiple offers however, be absolutely sure you are ready to open escrow and purchase anything you make an offer on WITHOUT waiting to see if one of the other offers pans out.

Its a tough market.... but there's so much opportunity now that we are enjoying realistic pricing. Have your agent demand to know the reason for the denial on this offer... but definitely get back out there and start looking again if you're not already!

Tara

Tara Steinke
Residential Sales and Appraisal
Serving all of San Diego
619-384-6014
SDRealtor.Tara@gmail.com
http://www.san-diego-homes.net