Short sales simply take too long and buyers get impatient

Editor,

Short sales are a headache! Reason: Because the buyer has to wait 60-90 days to find out if their offer was accepted or not. Many buyers get disgusted and walk away. Also, many Realtors are starting to lowball the price of a short sale in order to create interest for buyers, which creates confusion.

As a licensee trained on short sales, we, as Realtors, are told to take the list price and reduce it by 30 percent. But the banks are not accepting these offers. The lenders are basing their acceptance on some random appraisal, which is ridiculous because many of these agent’s CMA’s and lenders are out of state, and are basing their acceptance of such offers on old appraisals.

Lenders and are not listening to the actual listing agents of said properties, who reside in the state where the property is located, resulting in rejected offers on homes sitting on the market and vacant! And they usually wind up going into foreclosure, which is not good because the house deteriorates and becomes neglected!

Because the lenders are rejecting these offers, it is also forcing many sellers to go into bankruptcy following foreclosure.

I would like to see the lenders give the buyer’s agent a response within 7-10 business days, with a ‘yes or no’ answer or counter offer to the offer submitted. It seems odd to call it a short sale, when indeed it’s a long sale, because buyers have to wait for an answer.

Currently there are 100s of homes sitting vacant on the market due to the lender’s long responses in accepting offers for these properties. I certainly hope this will change very soon, because I feel it will get the housing market moving again.

Fran Accurso
Blue Waters Realty
Miami Beach

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