Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Bryant Tutas on October 11, 2010 at 12:52am

Of course it's legal. The approval through Equator is nothing more than getting the package ready to submit to the investor. The investor has the final say so. Until you have the actual written approval you are still negotiating.

Permalink Reply by Terry L. Osburn on October 11, 2010 at 4:21pm

Bryant said it all....

Permalink Reply by joe beauchamp on October 11, 2010 at 7:24pm

Most likely, you have the average or below "negotiator" at BofA. Passed the ability to determine the fries button from the deny button - maybe no more. Way too often, because it SHOULD BE rare, they don't follow the investor guidelines and/or missing something obvious. Then your counter makes it go to the investor where the investor gives the negotiator a lollypop and tells him to go and read paragraph X about adding in item Y. And so he does and you get the higher counter.

Yes, what you say can be done and can be useful for finding things. After losing a buyer and knowing that the BPO was bad, I kicked it up and down - result was I found their bottom line for the current BPO - absurdly high, but still found it. I let things ride (if you don't call BofA, many things will sit there for months) so that any possible foreclosure would sit until a new buyer was found.

That is one of the funny things about the negative attitude of BofA that works against them. Because THEY must be in control, they can never simply accept your offer, oh no, it must be BofA who will spit back your offer to them so that puny little meager you can agree to their "edict". What does that mean? Hey, change it any time you want, you never have to worry about them ever ever accepting anything you submit - they don't think like that - they can only counter... HA!

Permalink Reply by Cindy LaPeer on October 12, 2010 at 7:23pm

They just did it to my clients and me. The buyer wants to refuse the counter offer and start all over. He's hoping that we will get another negotiator. However, I can't do anything about it on Equator except send an email to the negotiator telling him/her that the buyer has walked.

Permalink Reply by joe beauchamp on October 13, 2010 at 8:31pm

NO, don't waste the time and energy. You already have the buyer giving you the blessing to kill or whatever, you now have a free hand.

Play with the counter. So long as you make changes that are non-trivial, all but the most inept negotiator will respond with a counter. This allows you to add attorney fee on the next counter, move HOA costs to HOA transfer costs - while doing other things like upping the sales price a little (the net is more important, so that is what you want to have moving around).

Since you have the go-ahead, you don't have to worry about a denial - you said you even wanted it. A flaw in your approach is that if the investor wants $X, the negotiator is a complete idiot to deny the SS if you are giving the investor what he need - the negotiator is violating their contract. Even if he is a jerk pinhead. With carte blanche, jack the numbers how you want them to be.

Here you end up with 2 choices. Talk to the negotiator - if he is honest and not the bottom of the barrel inept, he will tell you what he needs for the investor - it is usually to the very penny. Then you can adjust what you need and submit it and he will accept it.

Or you can assume that the BPO is not bad and that come hell or high water, "this" is the final offer you will make, take it or leave it. When you reach that point, put into the counter that the buyer is only qualified up to this amount. Also put in, "Please submit directly to the investor". You have just said, this is final, stop screwing around, take it or leave it. And, if you'd like, you can put that in there, also, however those 2 phrases above are magical to the negotiator and mean DO IT!

Since the negotiator could be lying about the investor (if he is not lying, then he screwed up on reading the guideline and should not have accepted your offer), you might want to try the first thing - you'll learn things - how easy it is to get the number, or maybe that the negotiator is psycho or maybe swings back and forth and you got him on a good day and make progress. The good thing is that since you already hate him and you already got the go ahead to dump him, use the opportunity to explore and NOT worry about burning bridges with him. It could be positive..

Then, concluding that he is a lying snake, go ahead with the 2nd and force the issue. He will NOT deny the short sale if you meet the investor needed net. He can't because you could complain to the investor about him. And, you told him "no more games" go right to the investor - NOW! So, regardless of the negotiator, you will get the end result from the investor.

If the negotiator is a super jerk and ignores your request to send it to the investor, after you see the delay in things via the rep, send an equator message and include the team lead, neg. and manager - "What's going on with this file? The seller has no more to give, the buyer is at his limit, we have cut the costs to the bone and we are totally done here - I requested that this be sent to the investor for FINAL consideration and I don't see that it has been. Why not? What is the holdup?" etc.

Anyway, I **love** it when I get the go ahead to mess around, learn things and not worry about the consequences. What will you learn if the investor says no? That another negotiator is not the answer. And what if the investor approves? You're done!

If you get the denial for insufficient offer, you get your denial and can restart anyway - of course you better find out why the investor said no if you think it should be a yes. Probably a new, bad BPO - yuck.