Chances are you either know someone who is or you yourself have been involved in a short sale or foreclosure, that’s the sad truth of the times. I would also say that from the turn of the economy to now many banks are much better than they were and systems are being implemented to save time.

That being said I would still say overall “wake up banks and pull your head out of….well you know” – in many case you’re stepping over dollars to pick up dimes and even pennies in some cases. I have been involved with many short sales from the listing side and for the most part we get them done and our clients are served well in the end. However in some cases banks are just simply sticking their head in the sand with offers and loosing tens of thousands of dollars that overall must be adding up to be millions.

Here is an example of a recent one we had, summarized. My listing and another agent had the buyer. Offer submitted and it was a clean offer with conventional financing. Offer was in-line with the market, not to low not to high just a great offer with no contingencies. Offer was sent and we did all the due diligence that goes with that, negotiator was corresponding with us that all looked good, BPO was done and so on. At the typical 75 day mark when we would get the approval letter the bank denied it and here was there reason……………………”sorry we can not accept as the sellers are current on their payment – if they were not current we could accept” What? Are you kidding me?? So what we need to do is stop making the payment to have the bank loose even more money then go back with another offer I asked the bank and believe it or not they said “yes” – how stupid is that I ask.

Another recent one we did was with the big bank that most of us refer to by using three letters that starts with “B” and ends in “A”. I had an offer on my listing at the bank – everything was looking great. Our negotiator called me on 1/1/2011 left a voice mail the offer was accepted (took 80 days) I called the buyers agent to let them know and for reasons not to do with the house they pulled their offer. I was able to obtain another offer right away as I had a back up – called the negotiator same day, literally hours later and said our buyer bailed but I have another signed offer right here that actually nets you guy’s $2,500 more and closes a week earlier. the bank replied it needed to be re-assigned and start over because although the offer was better the “names on the PA ” were different so their system needed to go back to the beginning – what a joke. By doing that the bank is now loosing another 2 months of income and creating more of a loss because of a name change.

I have found when I am denied or negotiator’s are bad I go to the top. I have e-mailed VPs’ of Chase, TCF, BOA and others that have provided me extremely quick replies. The banks need to wake up and see the money they are loosing by not having enough staff, not having good negotiators or both. I noticed this morning a house just west of Minneapolis that is bank owned (real fixer upper) that I wrote an offer on for a friend a few weeks ago, it was listed at $99,900 we offered $75,000 cash the bank rejected it with no counter. Said we were not even close and was not worth the time to counter. It was just reduced to $59,900 2 weeks later – hello??

I would love to hear other stories from agents and homeowners – post them here in the comments maybe we can learn from others from their stories. If we can get some stories I would love to send this blog to some of the banks attention and or our local Congress reps.