short sale tips & venting

[PHIL ALIAS]

For the Buyer S H O R T (So Highly Obnoxious Real-estate Trick) sale is the world's biggest black whole with a complete lack of transparency for the buyer. As the buyer you will know very little on the status of the home you are trying to purchase and can only hope that your agent will keep you honestly informed. Your agent is subject to what information is provided to them buy the sellers agent, if any at all.

My First piece of advice for anyone considering a short sale purchase would be to require you agent to BCC (blind carbon copy) you on every email he sends to the seller’s agent. If they are not willing to do this then tell them they are not the agent for you. At least this way you will have some method of knowing that some conversations are taking place on your behalf. If you do this in advance, you eliminate any question of trust that may come up later.

Second piece of advice is to ask your agent to put his conversation in writing to you, rather than call you with the news. I will give you an example of what I have faced; A call that indicated "we have verbal approval on the bank approval the purchase price and we should open escrow on Monday". So as a result of this call we finally believe that we are making progress. The third time our agent has called as with "good news" only to be disappointed. The Monday came and went, no escrow, then Wednesday, "need seller to sign some additional papers"....and again we wait. So three times we have had this type of call, only to be followed with big let-downs in the way of follow-up emails. If all the "good-news" calls would have been in writing, I would be throwing them back in the face of my agent right now instead of leaving a comment on this website.

I realize that my agent and the seller's agent will get absolutely nothing in the way of commission, if this transaction is never completed. I also realize that the a big part of the S H O R T sale mystery is in the hands of the bank/investor of the property loan, but I have read about the Equator system used by some banks and wouldn't it be brilliant to get the buyer access to the information side of this system. Some type of system to check the status of your purchase once you have signed a contract and it has gone to the bank negotiator black hole.

Sincerely,
Phil (only pending 62 days as of July 13th)