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Permalink Reply by Jen Kwong on September 25, 2012 at 6:14pm

I have a similar problem where the listing agent failed to file on equator on time.  Buyer still wants property and fulfilled all of their requirements, but has gotten no where trying to resurrect the file.  We've been advised by other brokers to move on to another deal.

I would be curious if anyone has any other suggestions.

Permalink Reply by joe beauchamp on September 25, 2012 at 6:56pm

BofA has become even more difficult to deal with since they have "sped up" short sales starting in June. They haven't sped them up by getting things done faster, better or on time, they have sped them up by changing their deadlines for documents. It started out as 2 weeks for default time period. Since June it ranges from less than 24 hours to 3 calendar days - and "oddly" the majority of my counters come to me on a Thursday night, meaning I have 1 business day to get a response for a usually horrible counter from BofA. BofA "speeds up" short sales this way by getting a lot kicked out because the seller/buyer/agent didn't respond in time - not BofA's fault, right? And, of course, this speed up makes sense because everyone is complaining about how long they themselves are taking to respond to the bank and not on how long it takes the bank to process the short sale..???

The other prong of BofA pain is FHA. BofA is woefully slow with FHA. When those "specialists" wake up (like 17 yr locusts), you can find a sudden demand for something w/in 2 days or they will kill the deal. But that is not usual. Often you get non-responsive people and languish for months attempting to get any sort of management escalation. There are bright spots with occasional good specialists who work to get things done - often burdened with cleaning up after the others.

Ex: FHA, 1st buyer couldn't close, had another in same week, same deal mid-march. Finally closed last week. And this is NOT with sitting around hoping for BofA to do something. 3 non-FHA shore properties started in Feb - buyers walked in mid-July (hey, it is a summer property and summer is 1/2 over). These had BofA demands for 25% to 50% more than the top of the market - each counter came around 8PM Thursday night - must respond in 3 calendar days - sunday night. (Most recent - offer $210K, BofA counter $320K - put in BPO dispute - BofA insisted that buyer make another offer, would not modify bank counter - buyer walked incensed and insulted. They demanded the BPO dispute in 24 hrs - it took 3 weeks for them to look at it, another week the buyer walked, now about 2 months later, another buyer, another BPO and they want $275K - for the property still worth $210K - and now say that the comps for the previous BPO dispute are too old. Gotta love 'em.)

Now, that is from someone who actively works on short sales. Your listing agent could be a neophyte or could have hit a wall of zombies at BofA or somewhere in between.  He doesn't need to make up a reason to stall or get a denial from BofA.

I doubt that your agent is playing with a backup offer - he could run things up to getting a bad counter from BofA, get the "insufficient offer" denial from BofA, give that to you and put in the new buyer. No point in slowing things down in an earlier stage. On the other hand, if you don't have a lot of Tums, you may not want to mess with a BofA short sale.