Short Sales

Short sales have become a popular thing lately in the real estate market. However not many people, buyers and sellers alike, seem to understand what a short sale is and how the short sale process works. If you decide to get into a short sale, whether as a buyer or a seller, one thing is for certain, you better be extremely patient because the process will take a minimum of 8 weeks and often up to 6 months before the bank gives you an answer on your offer.

It is sad that the banks take so long to make decisions on short sale offers. From our experience in dealing with short sales the banks were ill prepared to handle this process and any/all attempts to improve the process have done little to help the situation. There are various departments you are directed to and each time you talk to someone you get a different answer. When something is finally fixed it takes 10-14 days for the fix to get into the system and when you call the bank to make sure everything is OK they tell you no one has a record of what was fixed.

A majority of these problems were caused by larger corporate banks and it appears they are doing very little to remedy the situation. Most of the smaller, local banks do everything they can to move the short sale process along as smoothly and quickly as possible. It makes you wonder with all the bailouts given to the corporate banks, do they really have the desire to help the people that bailed them out?