My Foray into the Short Sale Mess

So inevitably I suppose, the short sale spectre which has been looming this past year, finally entered into my day to day business. I currently have two deals (or attempted deals) in the short sale category. I am the selling agent on one, and the buyers agent on another.

While being on the buyers side is a lot less work, I find it more frustrating, because besides squeaky wheel phone calls to the listing agent, I have no control, as the frustratingly slow wheels of the bank system continuously leave the buyer up in the air as to whether this will actually happen.

Dealing with loss mitigation bank personnel is incredibly frustrating, because it seems there is no vested interest on that end to make the deal happen. All necessary hoops--hardship letter, financial corroboration, comparative market analysis, the necessary short sale "packet" as been submitted, and yet we sit and wait. I do believe that this will happen, but when is the question, and in the meantime, as an agent, all I can do is try to keep impatient buyers from moving on.

I read a stat that 80% of all short sale attempts fail, and the average short sale takes eight months to complete. I blame the lending institutions for that. The obvious apathy that I encounter on every phone call is absurd.

On a brighter side, my holiday weekend was full of showings. Buyers are looking again, and despite what the doom and gloomers are saying, things seem to be picking up.

Slow Business Unless Your a Bank Robber

I racked my brain this morning to come up with a real estate topic for this blog post, but the reality is, things for me have been quiet. I field daily inquiries, and have shown on the weekends, but everybody seems to be casual lookers right now. I don’t know, maybe it is the time of year, or maybe it is just happens to be the people who are contacting me. There hasn’t been a whole lot of activity on the pending or sold sections of the mls, so I think things in general are quiet.

The $8,000 tax credit did get extended which I think is good news, at least for the economy in general, I think it has minimal effect on second home purchases here in SC.

On the exciting news front we did have two bank robberies here in Callicoon within five days of each other, which is unusual to say the least. The first, on the Bank of America, the robbers were quickly apprehended, but so far the second bunch on the Bank of Jeffersonville remain at large. I’m sure the second was a “we coulda done better conversation” that built into the actual crime.

All the papers wrote that the first bank heist was in excess of 75K which I think is irresponsible to print. It surprised me that one would get that much from a teller hold-up in the sticks, and I think it got the second crew thinking. They should have told everyone they only made off with like $5,000. Probably would have prevented this second robbery.

Anyway just my two cents. Starting to get a response from my concierge business. www.catskillconcierge.com I have two interviews this weekend.