A lot of press and blogging is going on bashing banks and their handling of distressed mortgages, especially Short Sales. We need to remember a bank is looking at paperwork and making decisions without seeing the faces we do when working with distressed people. Mortgage vs. People. Us vs. the Bank.
The banks undoubtedly played the major role in putting the market into a dive. They were not staffed to handle the avalanche of bad loans that came back to them. They did not understand the short sale would become a settlement of choice when looking at all the costs and ramifications of foreclosure. Foreclosure was the predominate bank solution. Now they are seeing the short sale is a way to hold a higher property value than automatically foreclosing.
In any crisis it takes time to get a handle on who needs help and who can wait. I think there in is the problem that is now starting to flush itself out. If we are not submitting our short sales through Equator for Bank of America they are not dealing with the submissions because there is not medium to maintain an easy paper trail. Just yesterday Short Sale Executive Kimberly Dawson with Bank of America was interviewed by Alex Charfen with the Distressed Property Institute. She talked about the issues the bank has had to face in setting up policy to handle the distressed mortgages. They are now pre-qualifying mortgages for short sales. When a distressed property is listed we should immediately submit the paperwork to them and they will initiate an appraisal and give a value for the home. If we dispute the value they arrive at, we can submit comps for them to review to escalate for a change. If an associate is not handling the file in a timely manner, there is a place on Equator to escalate to the supervisor. This is the reason using Equator is important. All the correspondence and phone discussions related to a property are logged sequentially for easy review by anyone addressing issues or questions about the property.
I am not saying there are not people being hurt or have not been hurt. I am saying we need to have a source to stay up to date with Federal changes to HAFA, Refi and with what the banks are doing to gear themselves to handle distressed mortgages on a timelier basis. They are counting on us to educate ourselves for proper submission and proper follow up. Leaving 100 messages a day does not speed the process up. Sending 100 emails does not speed the process up. With Bank of America proper use of Equator is key! AR members Tim and Julie Harris have a post out titled Bank of America Cooperative Short Sale Program 2 Week Approvals and 2011 HAFA Guidelines. If you are a CDPE the information is available on the CDPE website. Either one will give some up to date hope to the clients we represent in the short sale process.
Not educating ourselves to the changes going on to facilitate short sales only fuels a fire of fear for home owners. We work in a tough and depressing market when dealing with the emotions of distressed home owners. We can be some light if we do our homework and stay up with the ongoing changes related to the options our clients have. Being part of perpetuating the bad that has happened does not instill much confidence for people to understand the short sale benefits.
Bob Courtney RA, CDPE, MCRE