Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Dean E Eshelman, CPA, CDPE, IRES on May 15, 2012 at 11:46am

Contact the Federal Reserve and the Controller of Currency, also outline this to your Congressman. Probably too late to get a response to save the deal.

Permalink Reply by joe beauchamp on May 16, 2012 at 3:45pm

If I read this properly, you got an approval to close 3/23 but you went back to BofA and told them that they wanted too much after you agreed to it. During this extended time, the seller wanted to back out and may have refused to send updated financial documents to the bank, right? So, you are upset that the bank didn't ignore the seller (whatever he did or told them) and didn't ignore their own appraisal and your agreement to purchase and just jump on a lower price instantly?

I must be missing something because if you agreed to buy a car from me at $10K and then refused to do so and then said you were going to complain to the BBB because I wouldn't take $9500 instead of what you agreed to, I think I would be the one in court suing you, right?

Usually, the closing officer is on his toes trying to make the deal close (sometimes not).  And usually the change is made pretty quickly because where banks don't trust people, they believe other banks.  Even though this is usually the case, I really don't see how you can demand them to instantly change the deal that you agreed to just because you want it that way.

From what you've said, they still haven't agreed to your new price and can just say no.  Banks have no requirement to do a short sale and BofA can simply point out that they agreed to a reasonable price that you agreed to and you let the approval lapse rather than keep your side of the bargain.  Where is their legal obligation to you in this? I don't see it.

And believe me, if you read 1/4 of my responses out here, you'll see that I don't regard the banks as friends to the public, homeowners or the world economy, so don't think I am asking/saying these things because I love BofA. I just think that your frustration is due to not knowing what the average short sale goes through and that delays are more than just plain common.  In fact, I have actually seen a short sale taken back by BofA AFTER the closing. Short sales are not certainties until they are completely done and the closing documents have been accepted by the bank.  It doesn't seem right, it just is what happens.  It seems that you expected the bank to act as an interested party happy to do the deal and do it quickly.  Not so - every successful short sale cuts their monthly income (to manage that account).  Sorry for your frustration, but I don't see how you could put together a real complaint.

Permalink Reply by Deena H on May 17, 2012 at 3:00am

Yes we did get an approval for 181k in feb to close 3/23 but when the FHA appraisal came back at 177k our lawyer advised us to get a price reduction cause why should we pay the 4k out of our pockets just because some realtor did a BPO that said it was worth more, you obviously know FHA appraisal's hold more weight than BPO's do!  We had every right to ask for a price reduction, and you can't compare houses to cars they are not the same!  The seller wanted to back out before the FHA appraisal came in and he only contemplated this for 2 days before he decided to sell again so he never dragged his feet on paperwork or anything, plus the bank never knew he was trying to back out, it was just told to his realtor!

I didn't expect them to instantly change the price but I definetly didn't expect that to take 5 weeks!  And yes in my post I did note that they did finally approve the FHA appraised price of 177k on 4/26!  What I am upset about is we are able buyers and they were told at least 10 times that our rate lock was expiring on 5/16, and still no Approval letter was sent out it's been 3 weeks since that verbal approval!  I don't care at this point that it took them 5 weeks to approve the new price, I am more frustrated that they apparently disregarded the fact that our rate was expiring on 5/16 and they made no attempts to get an approval letter out!  What in the world takes 3 weeks to get a letter out????  As of today there is still no approval letter or any updates as to why it is even taking this long!  Even if they would have sent it on 5/15 our loan officer could have tried to get a 5 day extension to close, but without the letter he had no backbone to stand on to ask for another extension!

The seller hasn't paid his mortgage in 2 years I would have thought the bank would want this property sold instead of dragging their feet!