Hello All,
I posted this on the central Discussion Board and wanted to make sure that all here received. Sorry for the duplicate post but I want to hear from you.
Very excited to report that I have been asked to sit on a panel with representatives from Fannie, Freddie and the Dept. of Treasury in October during the American Land Title Assn. Annual Convention in Charleston. The panel is entitled "Foreclosure Alternatives: The US Treasury Dept.'s HAFA Program" (Panel Description); and the audience will be title agency owners and managers from throughout the country.
I anticipate some nuts and bolts information from the GSE and Treasury reps; but I want to make sure that I bring to the audience some real world, in the trenches experience and guidance - something they can take home with them to help their clients' businesses. As I compile our experiences and note how these guidelines have been implemented by the various servicers, I am eager to hear about your experiences. Ultimately, the audience at this panel will get far more out of learning from our experience than they will from a recitation of the guidelines that are readily available online.
Thanks in advance for sharing!
Chris
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Thanks, Pat. Sorry for the troubles but I appreciate the experience. Stories like these will hopefully effect some substantive changes. Thanks again!
Chris
Hi Chris,
I think the biggest stumbling block is the lack of training on the HAFA vendor's part. I have had to, numerous times, download the HAFA training video, and send it to LRC or UTLS or AMS. I have also had to scan pages from the MHA handbook to negotiators. Essentially, if the people who were actually processing the loans new as much about HAFA as we did, the world would be a lot easier!
That's very exciting Chris! It took my client about one year to get approved for a HAFA short sale. First he made too much money, then not enough, then finally just the right amount. The approved price of $168,000 was much higher than market value. I think they did an exterior BPO because had they gone in the house, they would have seen all the work that needed to be done. We listed the house at $168,000 and had lots of showings but the feedback was that the house was overpriced. Per the guidelines, I sent in a CMA trying to get a price reduction approved but was ignored. We finally decided to reduce the price without approval because we knew it was the only way to get an offer. We reduced the price to $149,000 and got an offer at $129,000. (A few days later we also got a backup offer).
We submitted it via the Equator system (Bank of America was the lender) and the offer docs kept getting rejected without an explanation. I sent countless emails in Equator and called B of A only to be ignored in Equator and told over the phone that they didn't know why the docs were rejected. I finally contacted the Twitter help team (amazing by the way!) and they escalated the file.
I learned that for the first 120 of a HAFA short sale, they will only accept offers at the approved price. There was no way any buyer in their right mind was going to pay $168,000 for the house. We were told that if we let the HAFA agreement expire, we could then submit the offer as a traditional short sale. Our concern was that the auction date was 4 business days after the expiration of the HAFA agreement and we weren't confident we could get the foreclosure postponed in only 4 days. A HAFA short sale automatically rolls into a HAFA Deed in Lieu, so that's what the seller is currently attempting.
It's so frustrating to have 2 offers on a house that you can't get approved because the approved price was determined by someone out of the area that doesn't know the local market. I will share this experience with every client of mine thinking of doing a HAFA short sale. It sounds great in theory but it is not working. We need the ability to set our own list price based on the local market. We are professionals and know what a house will sell for.
Frustrating but excellent insight, Cheri. Thank you very much. I will definitely include in my pre-panel discussions with the others something about valuations and the possibility of disputation of out of whack values.
On a side note, you are spot on about @BofA_Help. Karen Gillies and the others on the social media squad have never let us down in breaking through seemingly impassable barriers. I am at @chrisblack01 and the company is at @wingedfoottitle if you'd like to follow. Will follow back for sure. Thanks for the input.
Chris
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