Short Sale Success Stories

BB&T – Branch Banking and Trust Company is a rather small lender. This particular loan was an FHA loan, which has its advantages to the short sale seller.

We submitted the short sale packet as the property went on market. It took over two months for BB&T to take real action on the file, which happened to coincide with the time we secured a strong cash buyer for the home.  

To our surprise - the short sale approval arrived just over a week later, and shortly after we closed.

OWED: $200,000

APPROVED AND CLOSED WITH FULL DEBT FORGIVENESS: $83,000

FHA SELLER INCENTIVE: $1,000

TOTAL TIMEFRAME LIST TO CLOSE: 3 MONTHS

While none of my other HAFA experiences have ever been good ones, this Nationstar short sale was the exception to the rule and hopefully a sign of things to come.

My clients came to me when their two mortgages with Nationstar had become debilitating and their commute to work had become unmanageable.

After 6 weeks on market a buyer was secured and a full short sale package headed to Nationstar.

 A few weeks later I heard from our negotiator.

While my client was not “delinquent enough” to be approved for an in-house short sale, they could be approved via HAFA.  Despite 9-15 month timeframes on my previous HAFA approvals, seeing no other option I advised my client to go ahead and attempt the HAFA short sale.

To my surprise – Less than…

A happy ending to a long story….BUT….what I don’t quite understand is why Wells Fargo and GMAC can process their FHA short sales through Equator (a fast and efficient online platform), yet Bank of America still requires all FHA short sales to be processed  manually.

A regular Bank of America short sale processed through Equator will generally take about 3-6 weeks….BUT this FHA MANUALLY PROCESSED short sale with Bank of America took a whopping 6 months to make it through the system.

Why BofA? It doesn’t need to be this way.

There wasn’t even any good reason the short sale took 6 months to get approved…forcing sellers through endless qualifying, repeatedly losing paperwork and unresponsive negotiators are the only reasons this short…

If there is a single short sale that I enjoy lately it’s a Bank of America Fannie Mae owned loan.  This is quite possibly the single most predictable servicer/investor combination and one I am more than happy to take on.  Most Bank of America short sales will go through their Equator system, including all their Fannie Mae owned loans.

Many of my clients are in the middle of a divorce leading to the unavoidable short sale of their home, as was the case here. My client was anticipating a long troublesome journey through the short sale process and was quite elated when his short sale proved to be quick and painless.

Within 5 weeks on market we secured a buyer for the home…and after submitting the package to Bank of America – a short sale…

HAFA - Governments "streamline" short sale solution? I dont know about you, but to me 14 months and streamline sounds like an oxymoron.

I've never been a fan of HAFA, and this Seterus short sale certainly didn't sway my opinion. I originally listed the property and immediately my clients applied for the HAFA program. 6 months later, my clients were approved for HAFA...at about 30% over market value. We were unable to find a buyer to pay 130% of market value....but we were able to find one to pay market value. We moaned and groaned and convinced the lender they were off base with their value...and they did reconsider several months later. Unfortunately by then the buyer was long gone and we had had the pleasure of starting all over.

A few months…

Its always a good day when a short sale gets approved and my clients never miss a single a payment and they get to retain their excellent credit. 

Such was the case for this CT couple. When his job was moved to the midwest, my clients were forced to face the fact that they could not possibly sell their house without coming to closing with close to $60,000 that they unfortunately did not have. Renting the property was not an option as this would have created a huge monthly loss that was unaffordable.

We priced the house aggressively and it was under contract within 2 weeks of going on market. Provident, as usual, proved to be a delight to work with. Our negotiator was reasonable, prompt and responsive. The only hitch was the Mortgage Insurance…

Out of all the lenders I work with, Provident lands towards the top of my list of favorites.

When this CT seller first called me, I had never even heard of Provident and feared for the worst. Smaller lenders can be be very disorganized and difficult to work with, however Provident proved to be the opposite. We did face a few delays though. First the property proved to be a tougher sell than I imagined...the market here in CT seems to be declining at a tremendous pace and sometimes it is simply hard to keep up. Second - my seller committed the cardinal sin of short sales - not providing documentation in a prompt fashion !!!!!.

If there's one thing you can do to help yourself as a CT short seller - it is to get all your documents in order quickly…

It's not every day I get to escape the big boys of banking - Bank of America, Wells Fargo, GMAC, etc -  and have the pleasure of dealing with our own little local Connecticut banks.

Dime Savings Bank proved to be an absolute delight to work with. I have my suspicions that this was actually one of their first short sales, since they didn't appear to really have a set process in place and actually seemed to value my expertise in the matter. There is no short sale department and my main contact was the head of collections - Matt. I even met Matt at the property as he wanted to get a real feel for the condition of the property so he could take his observations back to the committee personally. Matt was a dream to work with and for the first time, I…

A CT Bank of America Cooperative Short Sale Success

I originally heard of BofA’s Cooperative Short Sale Program over a year ago. Promises of quick approvals and cash incentives went in one ear and out the other. It seems Bank of America has lots of plans that never materialize.

Over the last year I have had dealt with numerous Bank of America short sales, yet not one of their “cooperative short sales” so I assumed it was a fly by night idea that never really got off the ground.

Then I finally ran into one. The client had been attempting to short sale for several years unsuccessully when he called me. We put the property on market. As usual we found a buyer and went under contract rather quickly, but then the waiting began.

Usually…

Cleaning up the last agents mess - a Bank of America short sale tale

When I first met my client she had a current listing with another agent. Priced at just what was needed to get out of the loan, the house had sat on the market for 6 months for $80,000+ over market value. The previous agent had refused to do a short sale as she didn't understand them and- TO MY INCREDIBLE SURPRISE - had still taken a $5,000 retainer on the listing despite knowing she was incapable of handling the transaction!!!!

Realizing very quickly that she was facing an inevitable short sale, my new client still had to waste the next 6 months waiting for the current listing to expire. Thankfully there was no foreclosure date set or the consequences could have been much…