Short Sale Pocket Listings

[Steve K]

I’m guessing we’ve all been victims of non arms length short sale pocket listings several times. Yesterday I bid $50k over asking with no response from the listing agent. Same story, different day.

I'm going to have my attorney contact the attorney handling the bank side of the foreclosure and pass along my offer in the event that the accepted offer was lower than mine. It's my hope that the attorney will pass this offer along to the asset manager. Maybe that will get me somewhere and maybe it wont.

Has anyone done this successfully? Any other strategies that might help? I'm tired of the unethical agents and sellers but i realize they're just part of the current landscape.

[J Scott]

Originally posted by Steve K:

Has anyone done this successfully? Any other strategies that might help? I'm tired of the unethical agents and sellers but i realize they're just part of the current landscape.

The problem with this strategy is that you're passing along an offer that hasn't been accepted by the seller. The bank can't force the seller to accept an offer, and there are more conditions in the contract other than price. Just because your offer might be higher than the other offer doesn't mean yours is a better offer. Maybe the other offer is all cash, maybe there are no contingencies or inspection period, maybe they are willing to close the exact day the seller needs them to, maybe they plan to donate the house to charity and the seller wants to support that cause, etc.

There are a million reasons a seller chooses one offer over others, and to expect a bank to say, "This offer has a higher purchase price, you need to pick that one!" isn't realistic.

Of course, the bank could use your offer to define a higher value for the property and subsequently not accept the lower offer based on the value, but that's completely different than the bank accepting your offer for the seller.