I am tickled pink that another of my Elk Grove short sale listings finally closed escrow yesterday. I had put this home on the market on August 3, 2009, at an offering price of $190,000. It was a double Countrywide short sale, meaning it had 2 loans that had originated with Countrywide and are now serviced by Bank of America.
The seller had paid $422,000 for this home in 2005. You can see the value has fallen by about 50% over the past 5 years.
Because this home had a fabulous view from the second floor, we received 9 offers. It's a Kimball home with peach and pear trees in the back yard.
The winning offer was $215,000. The buyers hired a very smart real estate agent who was savvy enough to run the comparable sales and write a clean offer. Plus, the buyers were patient. Their agent informed them that this could be a long short sale process due to the double Countrywide loans.
You can do the math on this closing and see it took 7 months to close. Now, part of that problem was the file had been initially submitted to Bank of America through its old process, which involved faxing 100 or so pages of documents that the bank would eventually misplace. Halfway through the short sale, Bank of America allowed the file to be uploaded to Equator. It zipped along from that point.
See, the secret to successfully closing short sales is to contact the bank every single week and request an update. Even if there is nothing to update. With some of my short sales, I have almost daily contact with the bank. Success is due to persistence. Organization. The bank notes in the file how often the agent calls, and files with activity tend to receive priority. I sometimes get emails from other Elk Grove short sale agents asking me how to pull their short sales out of that dark hole at Bank of America, and that's what you do. You call or email the negotiator and politely push.
Yesterday morning, Bank of America approved the HUD. Along with the HUD approval, the bank sent an arm's length affidavit to be signed. Why didn't Bank of America send that document months ago? Oy. To close this, I had about 2 hours to get that affidavit signed by me, the buyers' agent, the buyers and the seller who lived back East. Thank goodness I wasn't out showing homes in Land Park yesterday morning and was at my home office to hammer this thing closed. By 11:30 AM, the buyer's lender had funded and we closed in the afternoon.
Photo: Elizabeth Weintraub, Elk Grove short sale agent
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Certified HAFA Specialist
My Sacramento Real Estate Listings
Elizabeth Weintraub is an author, home buying columnist for The New York Times-owned About.com, a Land Park resident, and a Land Park real estate agent who specializes in older, classic homes in Land Park, Curtis Park, Midtown and East Sacramento. Weintraub is also a Sacramento Short Sale agent who lists and successfully sells short sales throughout the four-county Sacramento area. Call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759. Put 35 years of real estate experience to work for you. Broker-Associate at Lyon Real Estate. DRE License # 00697006.
The Short Sale Savior, by Elizabeth Weintraub, available at Amazon.com.
Lyon Real Estate is not associated with the government, and our service is not approved by the government or your lender. Even if you accept this offer and use our service, your lender may not agree to change your loan.
Photo: Unless otherwise noted in this blog, the photo is copyrighted by Big Stock Photo and used with permission.
The views expressed herein are Weintraub's personal views and do not reflect the views of Lyon Real Estate.
Disclaimer: If this post contains a listing, information is deemed reliable as of the date it was written. After that date, the listing may be sold, listed by another brokerage, canceled, pending or taken temporarily off the market, and the price could change without notice. It could blow up, explode or vanish. To find out the present status of any listing, please go to elizabethweintraub.com.
Hi Elizabeth... You get a standing ovation from me for ANY short sale that you get closed with BofA! Congratulations!
Hey Steve: Yeah, well it's those double Countrywides that give me gray hair. I know some Sacramento short sale agents who won't even touch a double Countrywide short sale.
Elizabeth - The $190,000 list price with the ultimate $215,000 sold price, demonstrates what it takes to secure a short-sale. Low ball offers simply won't cut it. And like you say, the offer was cleanly written by a good agent! That's the magic elixir!
Congrats Elizabeth ! Nice to hear a success like this amongst a lot of messy short sale stories !
Cheers !
I've got one going right now and we are into a month on a double BOA waiting for word on the approval. It is very slow.
Congrats! Maybe we'll have the opportunity to close a deal together someday soon!
In our market 40-50% close. Our closing ratio for "regular" Short Sales is 100%, if we include the Hail Mary's it's at about 93%.