Wells Fargo

After a year of frustrating failed attempts to get his loan modified, this Connecticut homeowner decided to throw in the towel, cut his losses and short sell his upside down CT home.

Surprisingly, it took 5 whole weeks to find a buyer for the lovely waterfront home. Despite painstaking efforts to gain a quick approval, Wells Fargo (a mess as usual) shuffled the file around for almost 4 months before countering the purchase price. Some renegotiations followed and a resolution was reached. Wells Fargo approved the short sale and we were prepped to close.

CitiMortgage on the other hand assigned us an unresponsive, inexperienced processor. While Citimortgage is usually an absolute pleasure to work with, this would prove the exception. It took…

Wells Fargo short sales can be quite unpredictable. Sometimes they are a breeze and sometimes they drag out for months. This particular Wells Fargo FHA short sale did in fact drag out for months.

A fresh divorce left my Manchester CT homeowners upside down and stuck with a house neither could afford on their own. A short sale was their only reasonable option to avoid foreclosure and a possible deficiency judgement.

This Manchester CT short sale was listed and less than two months later a cash buyer was secured. Wells Fargo nitpicked the file for 4 solid months, and our negotiator was mostly unresponsive as we continuously pushed the file along. Why one Wells Fargo FHA short sale can be approved in a few weeks, and an identical Wells fargo FHA short…

The HELOC ( home equity line of credit ) department at Wells Fargo can be demanding to work with. While they will quite easily approve short sales and deliver lien releases, getting them to fully settle on their lines of credit can be quite painstaking.

When this Connecticut couple contacted me, they had been relocated accross the country by his employer and were stuck with some pretty heavy negative equity and unable to sell their Newtown home. While a sale could get enough to satisfy their first mortgage, the Wells Fargo second mortgage would be left out in the cold.

My sellers beautifully staged the home and it went on market priced agressively. It took less than a week to find a strong buyer for the home and a short sale package headed to…

This Colchester, CT homeowner was at the end of her rope as even FSBO efforts to sell while saving money had not ended in a successfull sale of her upside down property.

Little did we know that this particular short sale would be among the simplest and smoothest I have ever seen.

Since the loan was FHA (which offers short sale preapproval) we sent a complete short sale package at the same time we entered the market at an aggressive price. Just 18 days passed until we secured a strong buyer. Less than two weeks later we had the ATP - Approval to Participate - in the FHA short sale program.

We quickly sailed through inspections, appraisal and final approval...and this Wells Fargo FHA short sale closed 5 weeks later.

OWED: $180K

APPROVED…

Not even a shoot out could stop this Wells Fargo short sale!

Short sales are almost never smooth sailing – but this one came with more than its fair share of "disturbances".

Before calling me, my client had been listed with a Realtor with no real short sale experience – which had resulted in nothing but the Manchester, CT home sitting on the market as 6 months passed with zero progress. Now facing foreclosure,  my clients situation had become time sensitive. We listed the house with a price improvement, and not long after a cash buyer was secured.

Then the unthinkable happened. As the buyers were at the home, a hostage situation broke out…the neighbor decided to hold his family hostage and my listing quickly became a crime scene.…

This double Wells Fargo short sale (WF first and a WF HELOC) started out like many others. Wells (who was once my favorite lender), has only gone downhill in the last year or so. After a securing a buyer for the property and submitting a full package, Wells began their usual fumbling around. After a BPO came in too high, Wells countered and no agreement was ever reached on price...so the first time around, our short sale was left dead in the water and we started over.

Soon a second buyer was secured, and at exactly this time, Wells decided to move all their files over to Equator. Equator is a software platform that automates short sale processing. Equator has proven to be an improvement for every lender who has transitioned to using it, however it…

Wells Fargo - Oh where did you go wrong? You had it so together once...it seems those days are long gone now, aren't they?

This particular Wallingford, CT short sale was a Wells Fargo double header - A Freddie Mac first with Wells, and a Wells HELOC. This fun combination always requires a few things -For Freddie Mac to demand a note or cash, refuse in excess of "X" to the second and for the second to play hardball and only give a lien release...which is exactly how this short sale went down. This time though, we were able to get the note and cash contribution waived for the first, however the second would not budge and the client is forced to deal with the making some arrangements with the second after Freddie Mac and their first have disappeared…

Wells Fargo, once one of my favorite short sale lenders to work with has really gone down the tubes with their short sale processing. It seems they are overwhelmed, understaffed, and generaly a complete mess lately. What used to be a 4-6 week approval process has now turned into several months. I'm not sure where Wells Fargo went wrong, but I recently heard they were moving to Equator - following in the footsteps of Bank of America and GMAC. Equator is a step in the right direction for any lender and in my experience really expedites the short sale approval process, so I hope this is not just a rumor, but fact.

This particular Manchester, CT sale started slow and followed suit all the way to the end. It took three months to find a buyer for this…

I personally like working Wells Fargo short sales. It seems they have slowed down some in the last year but they are still reasonable to work with and their approvals dont take FOREVER.
This particular sale was challenging as it had three separate loans with Wells Fargo. Furthermore, the first was owned by Freddie Mac, who has recently picked up some very nasty short sale guidelines that make working with seconds near impossible.
Freddie Mac now refuses to allow more than $3,000 to go to any second, and goes even further to disallow any seller contributions to the second as well.
What used to happen was that when a second mortgagee wanted more than the first would give, a party to the sale could simply pay in the difference. So if a first lienholder was…

ASC cuts off nose to spite face - A Connecticut short sale success story

Owed:

ASC (Wells Fargo): $220,000

9 other random liens: $21,000

SOLD: $102,000

After a year of being listed with another agent at a too-high price, ZERO price reductions and no marketing except a single mls pic and a lot of misinformation ( including the wrong bed/bath info) these sellers were on the brink of foreclosure when they called me fall of 2009. 

About a week after a price correction and full marketing, a buyer was secured willing to pay $157,000. Negotiations with ASC began. Unfortunately this property came with some extra baggage - 9 non-mortgage judgement liens totalling just about $21,000. I requested a modest payoff on these from ASC. After many…