The short sale people do not worry about anything or the time involved. ie. the lender. The agent should have had the telephone number off of the title report that should have be done by the listing agent. THey should all be in the listing packet for the selling agent to see. Short sales are very emotional for the buyer as it takes so long for any paper work to be completed. They deal with thousands of people and they do not put extra help on for this. When you a looking for a bargain, sometimes you must be patient . I know it is tough - but try to be understanding of the agents involved. The lender is in the driver's seat!!

The lender can not talk to your agent about the status of the sale. They need written permision to disclose details of the transaction or any information on their borrower. To many calls and you go to the voicemail delete file.

I have a short that I just listed, the lender called me to arrange for appraisal, I returned the call 2 days ago and twice since, I have not heard back yet!

Nicolette,

Unfortuantely, this is reality. You may even have requests for updated information that was sent in originally.

The banks are taking up to two weeks to link a fax to the account for any negotiator to see.

The commitment on responses has been changed from calendar days to business days and are extending even those commitments. One bank commits to eneter the *first* comments to a full doc package in 40 business days. That's basically 2 months.

They are dealing with over 600 requests per employee in some cases.

We are all in the same boat.

As a buyer, you need to ask some very direct questions of the seller and their agent. You need to know how long they have been negotiating short sales and what their strategy is. If they don't have a written info sheet on the short sale process *at hand*, then you should find another home.

I hope that helps.

As an experienced Short Sale agent I can share with you that the process can be frustrating for all parties involoved and it can be a very timely process often 60-90+ days before any kind of approval is in hand. Hopefully, the right expectation was created in the onset with timelines.

I have been on the other side of things and represented a buyer and after 60 days with NO WORD, I requested to be added to the banks list allowing them to release information to me about the short sale (definately not the norm) -- and our goal was that this would allow us to keep tabs on things and ensure we were moving forward. Needless to say when I was added and finally spoke with the bank we learned that not one single piece of paperwork had been submitted to the bank! Imagine the frustration for myself and my client to learn this.

Just a few pieces of advice I can offer anyone venturing into a short sale either as a buyer, seller, or as an agent.
1) Ensure that the listing agent has not only experience with short sales but successs in closing them or if they will be using an experienced short sale negotiator (if so, at whose expense).
2) Find out who the lender is and ask the typical approval time upfront and ask how you often you will be updated to the status.
3) Find out if there is a second lienholder and who it is
4) Ask if the short sale packet has already been submitted to the bank (prior to accepting an offer) -- this involves all required information from the bank to allow them to start the process.
5) Find out if the borrow is late on payments (if they are willing to share that information)
6) Is the borrower currently in backruptcy or foreclosure and how does that affect the short sale.....

and the list goes on.

I will say, if you are working with an experienced short sale agent the process can be painless, most likely longer than a typical transaction but in the end often well worth the wait.

Good luck!!

Hi Nicolete,

I agree with Keane about the bank did not answer from anybody else unless
yopu have the authorization. I do have an offer on SHORT SALE too since July
14, 2009 as of now I do not have any answer from the bank. I think the Listing
Agent did not do a good job on this transaction. I heard from somebody that it
take about 4-6 months before the answer because of backlog. ... I think this
short sale deals are trying kill us as an agent....

Hi Nicolette, im not sure which state you are in, but what we do as buyers agents on short sales is ask to be an authorized person on the short sale with the bank. Some listing agents don't like to do that because they "think" is slows the process down, but it doesn't. The way to sell it to them is that the buyers agent won't be bugging them (listing agent) all the time for updates, they can just call for themselves. I'm an agent in Portland and we do a lot of short sales these days and have a system down! If you want, have your agent email or call me and i'd be happy to send them my short sale info:) and btw, calling daily or every other day, does help! I call the bank 3 to 4 times a week on all my deals.

Good luck and there's nothing short about a short sale!!!
Tracey Hicks
trahicks@msn.com http://www.traceyhicks.com

It's really hard to tell if the listing agent and the negotiator of the shortsale are doing a good job. It's not your job or your agent's job to do it, so this is very difficult.

I once had a transaction where the listing agent did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. My client's loan docs were at escrow, then the listing agent said the bank turned down the offer.

I then called the bank myself and told them, "I know I'm not authorized to talk to you about the seller's situation, but my buyer signed, the wire is at escrow and we can close right now." The house was going to auction in 5 days.

The bank didn't talk to me about the seller, but they said they didn't hear about a short sale from ANYBODY. They stopped the foreclosure, looked at the docs and closed.

I guess the moral of the tale I just gave is you really don't know what the seller's doing to get the shortsale, but it's out of your hands for now. Hopefully the communication is good good enough that you're not completely out of the loop