All Forum Posts by: Jake Carter

Just got a call from the manager of the negotiator my case had been assigned to with WaMu... The negotiator has never contacted me in anyway since she was assigned and I had left 3 voicemails for her. The email I sent a SVP on Tuesday was to the SVP of the Home Loan division for WaMu. She forwarded my email to the manager of Loss Mitigation who passed it onto the negotiator's manager. Anyways, she just called and had me fax Ocwen's approval directly to her and also gave me her direct line and said she would review the file and get back to me. I'll update when I hear back from her.

I called Ocwen yesterday afternoon and talked with Nigel, he said the CMA had finally been reviewed and that the sales price is in line with their evaluation. He submitted the SS to management for approval and I just got the approval letter faxed and emailed to me
:woohoo:
I've sent it off to WaMu and will be calling them later today. Seems like we're getting close to this actually happening.

I called WaMu today and was told that the file had been closed this morning due to them not having an approval on file from Ocwen. I asked how they could do that since Ocwen still has it as active and has not yet made a decision one way or the other. They said they automatically close out any SS files that reach 31 days from the date they were submitted if the junior lien holder has not accepted. I was ticked, the guy said I would have to resubmit everything to them and start the whole process over once I got approval from Ocwen...
So I called back and talked with someone else, she said what the other guy told me was true except that if I can get the approval from Ocwen within 30 days from today they can reopen the file without me having to resubmit. I'll be calling Ocwen 4 times a day until they give me an answer.

We are still waiting Ocwen's approval, in the meantime I've been trying to reach WaMu. I called 35 times between yesterday and today and not once was I able to in touch with someone in the Loss Mitigation Department. Until 9am PT this morning it was saying I had called outside of their normal business hours. 3 times I got a live person and each time they said I had reached customer care, they each transfered me to a busy signal. So I googled WaMu and Senior Vice President and found a few names, put them into an email as [email protected] and got a reply 8 minutes later from a woman who said she would follow up with Loss Mitigation and get back to me :mrgreen:

There is some truth to what they said about not doing more short sales. Here is an article on it, you can read my comment #16 towards the bottom. http://blog.mariah.com/2008/03/ocwen-picks-up-its-marbles/

Good luck with your short sale, hopefully they will proceed with it considering the situation.

I'm expecting to have an answer from Ocwen this week. They have had the CMA for a week as of tomorrow, two people I spoke with said they've been taking 3 to 5 days to complete the reviews.

WaMu is another story, since I left the message with the negotiator I have not heard back. I tried calling the next day, and each day since but she does not answer and her voice mail box has been full since I left the message. I've tried calling back to the main Loss Mit. Dept. line and as soon as they see its assigned to someone they transfer me to her line. I'll try some more tomorrow. It's been over a month since we got the offer and the buyer has given us 2, at the most 3, more weeks to get an answer from the lenders.

Ocwen finally has the CMA in the system and their appraisal department is reviewing it. So far with Ocwen I have called 38 times, 7 of those have been productive conversations, the rest have been agents that didn't have the answers I wanted, endless times on hold or being transferred to the Dial Tone Department.

Update on WaMu, I called this morning and found that we have been assigned to a negotiator and I got her name and ext. Left her a message, hopefully this will get the ball rolling with them. I've been calling over the past month but each time I've been told until it is assigned to someone there is nothing they can do.

Here is a tip on WaMu, if you call the Loss Mitigation (866-926-8937) area and are prompted for a survey before talking to someone, hang up and call back. No matter if you select yes or no for the survey it will then send you to the banking call center, not Loss Mitigation.

Also they give one fax number (904-886-1329) in their short sale packet, it was busy or rang with no answer for 2 days last week while I was trying to send them the updated net sheet. I called and was given two other fax lines, same as above but ending in 1328 or 1325.

Jake

Quick update on this, it's been about a week and no real progress. After getting the updated net sheet finally in their system they said they could not approve without a CMA (Comparative Market Analysis) being done. My agent had sent in 10 comps, with pictures in the short sale packet even though they didn't ask for it, along with a description of the market in this area. They have their own CMA form and want the pictures in color, they also want it typed, not handwritten. However they sent us a locked down PDF version of the form. So after a few days of back and forth in emails trying to get a version we could work with I just recreated the form myself. We sent it in along with the pictures this afternoon, I'll call tomorrow morning and see if they have it.

On the comment about calling Ocwen back if you don't like the answer... so very true. Each time I call its like talking to completely different companies.
I called 3 times yesterday, the guy I had emailed the Net Sheet to has not replied to 2 emails. One person I talked with yesterday asked me to fax in the documents, which I did. I called again earlier and spent 2 hours of being placed on hold and transferred before I finally talked with someone good. Her name was Kate and she really knew what she was talking about. I had talked with a guy 30 minutes before her that honestly did not seem to understand what a short sale was no matter how I explained it, and he was in loan resolution...
Kate said that the updated Net Sheet is not in the system yet. She said they have a team of people who are responsible for accepting the faxes and then entering them into the electronic system that the loan resolution agents view. She said that until it is there she cannot give an approval. She did say that the 1,000 offer is standard and that she does not see it being a problem at all. She said the next step for them once they have the doc in the system would be to ask a manager over to their desk, they would look over the numbers and then give the yes or no. She said based on her experience my chances with them are very good.
So I call tomorrow morning, hopefully we'll get the approval and then start working with WaMu.

I have read articles that say as low as 50 points to as much as 300, which is the same as a foreclosure would be. We are hoping for the lower end. We have some friends who recently completed a short sale, they owed 1.1 mil and sold for 850k, they missed 4 payments during the process. Their lender, US Bank gave them full forgiveness of the debt and put in writing that they would not report it. I was unaware until they told me that there is no law requiring the lenders to report it. I'm not sure how it shows on their credit report though, I will ask. Their credit has gone down just 80 points, due in part to the missed payments and the rest to some other credit issues they are having.
We have not missed a single payment on the 1st or 2nd and are hoping that the move out of state is enough leverage to get the lenders to accept. Our agent said in all other cases he has seen where people were not moving out of state the lenders would usually not even start talking short sale until they were at least 3 months behind on payments.

Hi all,
I am in the process of a short sale on my home here in CA. I started keeping a log of what has happened so far and thought it might benefit others if I share what happens. So I googled for a short sale/foreclosure forum and this was one of the first that appeared. Hopefully this will be informative and depending on the final outcome help others negotiate through this process.
My wife and I have lived in CA since birth, both 30 now with 2 daughters. I work for Bank of America in IT and have been offered the chance to relocate, on my dime though, to Charlotte, NC keeping the same job and salary level. We love that area and had been talking about moving out of state anyways so we are going for it. Here is what has happened so far, I'll update this as things progress. If anyone has any tips or questions please post away.

House purchased for $ 563,250 in August of 2005. First and second originally with Wells Fargo at $450,816 and $56,352 with a down payment of $56,352. Total debt $507,168.
Refinanced in 2006 – big mistake, bad broker, bad choice by me, didn’t read fine print, etc. – negam loan with 25k in prepayments on 1st and 2nd, first with WaMu, second with Ocwen. Balance on first now 508k, and 55k on second. Total debt $563k. House was worth 650k at the peak right after we bought it.

We will move to Charlotte, NC in June once the kids are out of school for the summer. Talked with real estate agent who is also one of my best friends, decided that we would attempt a short sale. Our initial thought was to keep the house and rent it, but the most we could get for rent is 2,000 and our minimum payment is 3,200 and at that we are adding 1500/mo to the principal. Based on that the short sale sounds like the best option for us.
Both our credit scores are just below 800 so we know that we won't be too bad off once it hits our credit report and should still be above average. I am pre-approved for a new loan in NC with my employer, contigent on this house selling. If we can close here and on the new house within 90 days they will not pull my credit again.

We listed the house at $349,900 based on comps and active listings in area. Most houses in area staying on market for 2 months, had a solid offer 1 week after listing. Offer is for full asking price and they are willing to wait out the short sale process :D .
Completed short sale package for both lenders and faxed in less than 1 week after getting the offer. Called both lenders 2 days later, both say fax never received. Three attempts later and they both say they have it now.

WaMu:
They absolutly will not proceed until they know Ocwen will accept $1,000 or less. Called multiple times, got the same response from multiple people, on to Ocwen…

Ocwen:
Faxed short sale package (108) pages on 2/26, entered into their computer system on 2/29. Called on the 29th and confirmed they received package. Was told it could take 10 to 15 days before we hear back from them.
Phone number for Loan Resolution Department 888.779.2857 (hours 8am to 7pm ET)

March 4th called and spoke with Alex, asked if there were any updates to the status. He said that the SS package was being reviewed and that the process could take as much as 45 days due to how busy they have been. Was able to tell me that the package was complete and we gave them everything they needed.

March 7th called and spoke with Leena, she said I had reached the wrong area and she would transfer me to the correct area, gave me the same number I had called. The line was silent for 30 seconds, then a fast busy and disconnected. By the way this is the 10th time since we started that the exact thing has happened.

March 7th called back after being disconnected spoke with Aksakshit (no it's not a typo). He asked what we owed WaMu and what they were getting as a net offer. I told him my agent had included that in the short sale packet. He put me on hold for about 10 minutes while he reviewed the information. He came back on the line and asked if I knew what the commission would be and what our current payoff was with WaMu. I told him 4% on the commission and that we owed 508k. He said that the numbers all looked good to him and based on what he was seeing he could approve the offer. He put me on hold for another 5 minutes then came back on and said that the commission was listed at 6% in the paperwork and they could not accept it, he also said that they also could not accept 1,000 and wanted at least 35,000 to close the loan. I told him that WaMu’s policy was to only allow the 2nd to get 1,000 if they were taking a loss on the first. He said he was aware of that but unless we could change their minds Ocwen would not accept our offer. I told him we have no other choice other than to foreclose and he said they would rather foreclose than take the short sale at 1,000. I told him thanks but I’ll call back and talk to someone else.

Spoke with my agent, he is willing to adjust to 4% commission. He already commited to the buyers agent at 3% so he will be taking just 1%. As mentioned above though he is a very good friend and more than willing to do this for us.

I called Ocwen back, spoke with Elrigea. Told him that I had called earlier and was told my offer could be accepted but that we had the commissions too high at 6% and they would approve if we lowered to 4%, I did not mention the 35,000 Aksakshit said they wanted. He spent a few minutes looking at the paperwork and said they would need a new Net Sheet or HUD1 showing the 4%. He gave me his email address and said he would work directly with us on getting it approved.

Called my agent back and gave him the good news, he faxed me the updated documents, we signed them and I emailed them to Elrigea at 3:30pm. Waiting on his reply now, my hopes are up, hopefully we'll hear from him Monday.

Jake