Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by John Treadwell on August 27, 2010 at 11:41am

I think it's much better now, BOA has become the easy one to work with now. Just have to keep on them with e-mails twice a week and things work out.

Permalink Reply by Karyl Moore on August 27, 2010 at 12:10pm

It's definitely better. Things are going much faster and you don't hear all the time that they never received the papers you sent 4x already. The two most frustrating things which remain are (1) negotiators (and other people up the line) who never respond to e-mails. On some files I've e-mailed the whole line of people and not one person has responded; (2) when one offer is withdrawn/canceled and you have a new offer, you have to start over - even if you've gotten to the point of an agreed upon price. It wastes a lot of time and money (they do more appraisals). Thanks for passing the word! Hope it helps!

Permalink Reply by Brigitte Powell on August 27, 2010 at 7:00pm

Sorry guys, I still see too many frustrated posts. My last one was a nightmare and just closed in June, so I still have a "bad taste in my mouth" from the "stupidity factors". Poor communications......very poor. Negotiators from h..l who had not even the first clue, nor cared to get a clue. :-) I hope this question gets a thunderous response :-)

Permalink Reply by Kathleen Sheridan on August 28, 2010 at 9:42am

Going through Equator is certainly a big improvement over the old system where my short sale spent months getting to the negotiator, was immediately rejected for no reason so I had to start over.. It works best when you can establish a good relationship with the investor. I have also had success when I needed help understanding what was being asked of me by going to the on line chat provided by Equator.

There are a few issues. One short sale that I submitted was kicked out by the short sale system, because it was too low according to some unidentified assumption about the market value in the zip code, apparently. No one could tell me exactly what to do, but based on the hints that I received from customer service, I finally entered a completely bogus sale price at the beginning, then up loaded some comps to support the real price. The short sale was approved at the offer price, so it seems that this function of Equator could just be eliminated.

The very nice and helpful people in customer service, who answer the phone, are not very good sources of information. As many times that you call you will get that many different answers to the same question. Might as well train these people to be negotiators and move everything forward much faster.

There is in general a lack of concern about the buyer, who is the key to the whole transaction. If BofA wants market prices they have to be competitive with other sellers including their own REO departments. This means reasonable time from offer to closing 60 days should be the maximum. It means offering the same seller assistance that is common in the market, and doing essential repairs (roof, electric, heat, plumbing) if required for the buyer's financing. It means starting the negotiation with the MI company, since their terms tend to be the issue which makes any offer impossible to close. Waiting 6 months to find out that the MI company wants cash from the buyer or seller that neither one has wastes time and money for everyone, including the investor, while the property value drops and the neighborhood suffers.

Qualifying the seller, HAFA or not, and establishing a desired selling price and terms at the beginning of the listing would result in a better outcome for everyone BofA included.

Permalink Reply by Bob Davies on October 6, 2010 at 5:21am

Up until the past 2 weeks I was a very big advocate of BOA & Equator. I found myself constantly defending them when agents complained about their system & response. Recently my opinion is starting to change. Here is my experience over the last couple weeks:
I have a property that I have had on the market for 3 months and adjusted the price accordingly to generate an offer. We did not even have a showing until we reduced the price gradually to $105,000. The 1 showing we had the feedback was it is priced to high for today's market. I then waited for more activity which did not happen until it was reduced to $99,000. I then had 2 showings and 2 offers. The 1st offer was for $85,000 cash. I uploaded the offer to Equator & it was rejected. I asked the buyer for highest & best which was $90,000. That offer was immediately rejected. I had a back up offer for $111,000 cash it has been rejected by the automated system. I sell a lot of homes in this community so I know the neighborhood well and this is all the money on this home. If this offer of $111,000 is not sufficient then I don't know what to say because based on recent sales it is not even worth that.
I have requested a manual review of this property.
Has anyone else ran into this?

Permalink Reply by Jim Schneider on November 17, 2010 at 11:04am

Bob,

I am curious, did you try the technique mentioned by Kathleen above? I have seen several agents use a bogus input price to "fool" the automatic system, then submit documents and supporting comps. This is not from my personal experience, but I have another BofA comming up and I wanted to see if it works or not, in your experience.



Bob Davies said:

Up until the past 2 weeks I was a very big advocate of BOA & Equator. I found myself constantly defending them when agents complained about their system & response. Recently my opinion is starting to change. Here is my experience over the last couple weeks:
I have a property that I have had on the market for 3 months and adjusted the price accordingly to generate an offer. We did not even have a showing until we reduced the price gradually to $105,000. The 1 showing we had the feedback was it is priced to high for today's market. I then waited for more activity which did not happen until it was reduced to $99,000. I then had 2 showings and 2 offers. The 1st offer was for $85,000 cash. I uploaded the offer to Equator & it was rejected. I asked the buyer for highest & best which was $90,000. That offer was immediately rejected. I had a back up offer for $111,000 cash it has been rejected by the automated system. I sell a lot of homes in this community so I know the neighborhood well and this is all the money on this home. If this offer of $111,000 is not sufficient then I don't know what to say because based on recent sales it is not even worth that.
I have requested a manual review of this property.
Has anyone else ran into this?

Permalink Reply by Jeff Payne on November 17, 2010 at 11:20am

Can not speak for Bob, but I have done this on the occasion that I needed to

Jim Schneider said:

Bob,

I am curious, did you try the technique mentioned by Kathleen above? I have seen several agents use a bogus input price to "fool" the automatic system, then submit documents and supporting comps. This is not from my personal experience, but I have another BofA comming up and I wanted to see if it works or not, in your experience.



Bob Davies said:

Up until the past 2 weeks I was a very big advocate of BOA & Equator. I found myself constantly defending them when agents complained about their system & response. Recently my opinion is starting to change. Here is my experience over the last couple weeks:
I have a property that I have had on the market for 3 months and adjusted the price accordingly to generate an offer. We did not even have a showing until we reduced the price gradually to $105,000. The 1 showing we had the feedback was it is priced to high for today's market. I then waited for more activity which did not happen until it was reduced to $99,000. I then had 2 showings and 2 offers. The 1st offer was for $85,000 cash. I uploaded the offer to Equator & it was rejected. I asked the buyer for highest & best which was $90,000. That offer was immediately rejected. I had a back up offer for $111,000 cash it has been rejected by the automated system. I sell a lot of homes in this community so I know the neighborhood well and this is all the money on this home. If this offer of $111,000 is not sufficient then I don't know what to say because based on recent sales it is not even worth that.
I have requested a manual review of this property.
Has anyone else ran into this?

Permalink Reply by Bob Davies on November 20, 2010 at 8:49am

Jim,

Just wanted to follow up on this thread. There was some kind of delay in the system as some new items were added. I requested a manual review which took a week of uploading the authorization again & waiting for it to be approved by the negotiator. Once this was finally done everything went fast. Within 48 hours they ordered a new BPO, within 72 hours the negotiator contacted me with a counter offer. Buyer accepted, the worksheet automatically reduced the commission to 5%. I changed it to 6% then submitted offer. Within 48 hours I had a verbal approval then the next day the letter of approval was uploaded into the Equator system. They have approved the final HUD and we are set to close on 11/24.
Looks like Equator is back on track. I was very frustrated when something had changed in the system that kept kicking the file out of the system and I had to start all over with everything. Thankfully they have corrected that issue. As mentioned before I have been using Equator since inception and have always been pleased with it completely. They have won my confidence back.