Short Sale Approval Times

Short sales have become a way of life in the Tampa Bay area over the last couple of years and I don’t see this changing anytime soon. It can be extremely frustrating waiting for the lender to review and approve the file and it truly takes a group effort to successfully complete one. I’ve seen statistics saying that less than half of all short sales close, but that certainly hasn’t been my experience. I’ve only had one file not close and that was because the seller had three mortgages and a ton of assets. He was in a financial position such that he could have easily paid off the loans and in a case like that, the banks want to be repaid. Short sales are for people who cannot afford to pay back their loans and need to sell their homes, they’re not for people who have a high degree of assets and just don’t feel like paying back their loans.

I’ve done short sales with many different banks and each one has been different to deal with. I’m in the process of getting a short sale approved with Countrywide/Bank of America right now that I’ve been working on for close to 6 months and still isn’t approved, but I think it’s close. And I have another one with EMC that broke our own record and was approved start to finish in 18 business days! The one I did with Citimortgage took 2 months to be assigned to a negotiator, but then was approved in about 30 days. With Wells Fargo, they sent me a timeline showing the steps to approval, how long they would need for each step, and then they stuck to it pretty well and we got an approval in about 35 business days. My file with Wachovia took almost 3 months to be assigned to a negotiator, but once they got this done, they were great to work with and had the file approved in just a couple of weeks.

On each of these files, I followed the exact same process, but each one took a different amount of time for approval. Many agents hand the files over to a title company or attorney, but on mine I work together with the title company on each file. They do the majority of the follow up with the lender, but I still call the lender to check on it once a week. Doing it this way I know we’ve been able to service our clients better. For example, we had one file where the HOA told the title company they weren’t willing to negotiate any of their charges and the bank was offering a $1,000 to the seller at closing to help them move out. This $1,000 credit was being used up in paying the HOA fees and the Sellers really needed it to get an apartment. So, I had the Sellers speak with the HOA and get a list of things they were not in compliance on, it was mostly cleaning (pressure washing the side of the home) , weeding, and fixing a couple of boards on the fence. We made a deal with the HOA that if they fixed all of these things they would reduce the charges and my clients ended up getting back $800. If it had just been the title company working on the file they wouldn’t have gotten anything back. While $800 doesn’t seem like a lot, it is in some cases and the point I’m trying to make is that if you’re going to short sale your house, you need an agent that is on your side, has experience, and is willing to go the extra mile for you.