"Dear Patty,

At Bank of America we are continuously looking to improve our short sale process. You recently worked with us on a short sale transaction for the property located at 2880 Begonia Way, Cooper City, FL, 33026. Please take a moment to provide us your feedback."

So I took more than a moment and I sent Bank of America the feedback below...

Bank of America is still the worst lender to work short sales with. I know this sounds harsh, but if you want honest feedback on what it is like to work on a short sale with Bank of America, here it is:

Bank of America takes great pride in Equator and boasts that the system has helped streamline the short sale process. The only thing that Equator has helped do is take away Bank of America’s ability to claim that documents were lost or never sent. Of course this shortens the process, however, BoA still has every other issue it had before Equator. Equator will never be the solution to BoA’s problem simply because once everything is uploaded, there are still inapt BoA employees handling the files.

Instead of continuing to hire more and more folks who have not ever heard of a mortgage or have had ANY real estate or loss mitigation experience in their lives, please adequately train the staff you have. BoA encourages agents to escalate a file if we are having issues with negotiators, so we do. Supervisors and managers get “escalated” on Equator communications, but they do not have the decency to reply or address the issues in any way, so agents are stuck with a negotiator not willing to listen to us, who ultimately ends up closing down the file rather than work together. Bank of America Escalations are the butt of many jokes amongst agents because we all know that escalations that go to no one do not get resolved.

Another issue is that the employees who answer the 866.880.1232 number hardly ever are able to resolve anything. They are always very polite (so they can get a good review after the call I suppose), but they are inefficient, powerless, and not in way helpful except to let us know that there are no notes on the file. Calling the 866.880.1232 number makes it hard not to feel that the employees are there just to buy time and calm the callers down. Nothing productive is hardly ever done on the phone, and nothing is ever resolved. My office has had an instance where my licensed transaction coordinator was on a BoA call for more than 2 hours with a simple question. In those 2 hours, the only thing that was done was to transfers the call back and forth between two departments who felt that the other department should handle the matter and vice versa. At the end of 2 HOURS, we still had no answer to the question or solution to the issue. No other lender is this way. It is almost laughable if it didn’t waste so much of our time and resources.

Bank of America has layers and layers of bureaucracy that make it impossible to resolve anything; they just add to frustration, waste time, and more importantly, loss of money. Property values continue to decline while Bank of America short sales linger on the market due to Bank of America’s incompetence, arrogance, and total lack of care. Employees hide behind other employees so no one ever takes responsibility for anything. Bank of America also has a habit of blaming the “investor” for everything. Please stop. This is just another instance where BoA hides behind someone else and is not taking responsibility. ALL other servicers have almost all the same investors to answer to and SOMEHOW they manage to get the same issues resolved where BoA cannot reasons unbeknownst to me.

A HUGE problem that I cannot leave unmentioned are Bank of America BPOs that do not allow for short sales and REO comps. The VAST MAJORITY of the market are short sales and REOs. This is such an obvious issue, and so beyond any sort of rationality, that it doesn’t even need to be elaborated on. Once the highly overvalued BPOs do come in, there is a complete disregard for any facts presented to show that the BPO value is outrageously over market value. I have sent inspection reports, CMAs, letters breaking down all the problems with the property and pleading with the negotiator to please review the file and show the investor evidence of damage on many occasions (and even to the supervisors and managers). Only one negotiator in the one year I’ve had had this this listing (which has gone under contract 3 times, and did not close 3 times solely due to Bank of America) has listened to me and STILL the file was closed down due to a wrong BPO. Bank of America has allowed this home to be on the market for a year now, while the values continue to decrease, the condition of the home continues to deteriorate (roof needs replacing and it rains a whole lot in Florida), and the homeowners are pushed closer to foreclosure just because no one at Bank of America is willing to listen to reason and do their job properly. How does this make any financial sense to Bank of America or its investors? The home ends up either foreclosing while there is very willing and cooperative homeowners trying to do a short sale or after months and months the short sale is finally approved for a much lesser value than when the short sale first began. Bank of America is valuing a home at $240K when the home across the street from it (bigger and waterfront) closed at $195K last month (just 1 comp, I have much more evidence) and Bank of America still won’t budge.

Bank of America should stop the Public Relations and damage control efforts as they are pointless unless Bank of America gets a real system in place. Enough with the excuses, e.g "we service too many loans". Servicing too many loans is no excuse for the mess that you make of short sales; you have to work the files anyway, just do it right.  Take an example from Wells Fargo and other companies that have managed to pull themselves together. Chase was also subpar in their short sales process until about a year ago, but now they have a hold of their short sale system and I have minimal complaints about them; same goes for GMAC and others.  Clearly it can be done, but at this point, Bank of America is more concerned with asking for feedback and reviews, pretending they care, than to actually do something about it. Bank of America has had more than enough feedback from agents up to now, Bank of America, you already know what your issues are, so fix them!

As a final note, it is truly is a shame to see once a highly regarded brand becoming so despised by the public. The mention of the words “Bank of America” bring very negative opinions and strong emotions from anyone who has had the unfortunate need to deal with Bank of America in a time of distress.

Patty Da Silva, CDPE©, RESS®, AHWD®, e-PRO®, GREEN, CFS, TRC

BROKER - REALTOR® - Green Realty Properties®