Home sellers frustrated as short-sale deals collapse

By Stephanie Armour, USA TODAY
Scores of homeowners who thought they'd cut a deal with their banks to sell their houses for less than their unpaid mortgages are seeing those agreements fall apart months later, contributing to the mounting foreclosures that threaten the housing market's recovery.
The sales of homes for less than the amount owed the bank, known as "short sales," have been widely viewed as an alternative that could help slow the foreclosure epidemic. In theory, delinquent homeowners escape a mortgage they cannot afford, and lenders, although taking a loss, avoid the even costlier process of completing a foreclosure.

Instead, many homeowners are watching potential buyers walk away as months pass while they deal with lenders' lengthy delays, lost documents and unreturned calls, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Not all the snafus are lenders' fault; inexperienced real estate agents who fail to turn in complete paperwork also are causing holdups, as are severely underpricedhomes.

The problems have become such a kink in the market's recovery that banks and the federal government are launching new efforts this month to simplify and speed up the short-sale process.

Just 23% of short-sale offers that homeowners receive from potential buyers actually close, according to a February study of 1,300 real estate agents by Campbell Communications. More than 90% of agents cited a slow response from the lender as the reason short sales were lost.

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"The delays are quite extensive and a real problem. It's a serious issue," says Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com. "You're seeing a lot of short sales go bust, and it's contributing to the crisis because it's one of the reasons foreclosures continue to mount."

Jorge DeMattos, 45, just completed the short sale on his home in Pembroke Pines, Fla. — a process he and his real estate agent, Edward Goldfarb, say took 17 months and eight separate offers.

DeMattos began pursuing a short sale after he was laid off two years ago and his income plunged from $46,000 to $26,000 a year.

Chase Bank, his mortgage servicer, rejected the first offer, which was $14,000 over what was then fair market value, according to Goldfarb.

On the next seven offers, the bank took months to respond. Each prospective buyer got tired of waiting and canceled the contract. The eighth offer, accepted in May, was $24,000 less than the first one that Chase rejected in February 2008, Goldfarb says.

"Chase made it very difficult. I had to stop paying the mortgage. It was so frustrating," says DeMattos, who now lives with his sister in Kissimmee, Fla. "We would put the paperwork in, and they would never give a definite answer. Buyers waited for months."

DeMattos says he owed $355,000 on his mortgage. The short-sale price was $225,000.

Christine Holevas, a Chase spokeswoman, says earlier offers on the home weren't accepted because they were significantly below the appraised value and the homeowner didn't send in updated financial information.

No longer uncommon

Short sales once were extremely rare. But now, with unemployment climbing and home values down, more homeowners are pursuing short sales when they can't afford their mortgage. About 11% of all sales transactions in June are such short sales, according to the NAR.

Some delays stem from agents who fail to prepare buyers and sellers for the length of time it takes to get a short sale approved or who supply incomplete information to banks.

But many short sales are faltering, largely because some lenders may lack the internal staffing, expertise and systems to process such sales in a timely fashion. And short sales can be complex, especially if they involve home-equity lines of credit or other second liens held by different lenders, who also must agree to take less than the amount they're owed from a home's sale.

Several lenders acknowledge that banks have been part of the problem, in part because most have done so few short sales in the past that they've faced a steep learning curve.

"About half of short sales never close. We see it as a big lost opportunity, and we need to improve the rate we close them," says David Sunlin, vice president in charge of short sales at Bank of America.

Uncompleted short sales that go to foreclosure are costlier for lenders and homeowners. For lenders, a short sale may save as much as 30% of the expense incurred by going to foreclosure.

For homeowners, a foreclosure wreaks longer-lasting damage to their credit records. A homeowner who has gone through a short sale typically can get a new home loan in one to three years, according to the NAR. A foreclosure usually means it takes seven.

Borrowers are expected to pay their mortgage during the short-sale process, but not all can afford to. That leads to abandoned properties that may sit vacant and deteriorate for months. In other cases, homeowners unable to make their payments may stay put and pay nothing, in some cases for up to a year, until the lenders' review-and-approval process plays out.

Large numbers of uncompleted short sales are especially troublesome, because other efforts to stem foreclosures have been less effective than expected. The Obama administration's housing rescue plan, which includes getting banks to rework home loans into more affordable mortgages, has made such slow progress that representatives from 25 major mortgage servicers were called to Washington, D.C., last month to discuss improving the efforts.

Short sales are moving into the national spotlight now as:

•Mortgage servicers ramp up their programs. Bank of America has begun trying to slash the turnaround time on short sales from up to 90 days after a buyer submits an application to just a week. In a typical short sale, a buyer makes an offer, then the bank conducts appraisals to determine the price it will accept. Setting that price can take so long that would-be buyers may walk away. To try to avoid such delays, Bank of America has begun doing appraisals and determining a minimum price it will accept before a home goes up for sale.

Meanwhile, Wells Fargo has created a real estate agent education guide that explains the process, has increased staffing and has set up procedures to handle short-sale requests and explain the process to homeowners. The bank says it has cut its average turnaround time from offer to approval from up to 90 days to about 30.

•The U.S. government is getting more involved. The Treasury Department soon will detail a plan to streamline short sales by providing standardized documentation and cash incentives to lenders and a moving allowance to homeowners.

Treasury has said that servicers have opted to pursue foreclosures instead of short sales because of the complexity and time required to complete the discounted home sales.

Borrowers who complete a short sale will be eligible for $1,500 to help with relocation expenses. Second-lien holders will get up to $1,000 to relinquish their claims in such transactions.

Eligible homeowners can be accepted through Dec. 31, 2012, but the short-sale program is for those unable to get mortgage modifications from their banks.

"We realized we couldn't reach everyone with a modification. For us, that wasn't the end of the story," says Michael Barr, Treasury assistant secretary for financial institutions. "The alternative is to significantly speed up short sales."

No authoritative figures on short sales' completion times are available, but some research indicates the problem is worsening.

A survey in March 2008 by Campbell Communications found that the average time for a mortgage servicer to respond to an offer to buy a short-sale property was 4.5 weeks. Campbell's follow-up survey in February found that the average response time had doubled to nine weeks.

A third survey in June found the response time was 9.5 weeks. The surveys were sponsored by Inside Mortgage Finance, an industry publication.

"The foot-dragging means it's taking six weeks to six months," says Lawrence Yun, chief economist with the NAR. "There are big delays. The review process is taking way too long."

'We had a learning curve'

Lenders say the approval process takes time because there are so many parties involved. Some bank officials say they've been learning as they go.

"We had a learning curve," says David Knight, senior vice president for Default Retention Operations, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. "Any stakeholder has a right to disapprove the sale. Realtors out there were used to regular sales. Now, all of a sudden, the servicer and Realtor have had to learn a lot."

Some real estate groups also are trying to improve the process. Re/Max International Chairman David Liniger says his company is aggressively working to train agents on handling short sales and other so-called distressed properties. Instead of eight weeks to close a short sale, trained agents can get them done in two to four weeks, he says.

Within the real estate industry, hopes are rising that short sales will become a shorter process.

"It's horrible the amount of time it's taking to do these sales," says Valerie Torelli, who owns Torelli Realty in Costa Mesa, Calif. "It happens all the time that short sales fail and then go to foreclosure. A seller doesn't make payments for a year and then just walks away. It's unbelievable."

I must agree these Short Sales can be extremely frustrating. I think the most important thing is seller have to be educated about the wait times. Here in my office we are successful at getting our Short Sales closed but it can take months before it happens. I had a deal with Countrywide finally close this month that I took the listing on a year ago. I had another close with Indymac that took two weeks. You just never know who your negotiator will be and at the end of the day they have the control.
ANGEL LYNN

Sacramento County Real Estate Market Update

After the hot foreclosure market of last year, this summer seems - in comparison - quiet and lackadaisical. A total of 1883 homes sold this July, a number close to the June homes sold. 50% of these sales are still REOs; however, the change is remarkable. Foreclosures have fallen 36.4% year over year. Short sales have gained ground by 75.6% and non-distressed sales by 30% but even that surge is not enough to make up for the unit volume shortfall of 12.5% year over year.

Sold price per square foot remained around the $120 mark where it was in June giving evidence to the argument that the market may have bottomed out after all. Currently average sold price per square foot is at $120.93. Average sales price has fallen 14% year over year from a high of $228,312 to rest at $196,323. Median sales price is currently at $175,000.

Inventory also continues to hover around the 3 month mark. Total inventory is at 3.3 months based on the last year of sales and 3.4 months based on the last six months of sales. Foreclosure inventory is at 0.5 months and 0.6 months respectively.

Obama's Loan Modification Program

You've probably heard about President Barack Obama's plan to rescue the housing market. He believes that restructuring distressed mortgages will help to keep struggling home owners in their homes. He also believes that this will help slow or stop the decline in housing prices. To this point $75 billion has been allocated toward modifying distressed loans and the Administration claims that it can help up to 4 million homeowners. Unfortunately, over half of those loans that have been modified have re-defaulted within six months.

Can Obama's plan help you? Well, let's look at it's main components:

First, the Obama administrations loan modification plan focuses on payments, not prices. They assume that home owners will want to stay in their homes as long as they can make the monthly payment regardless of the value of their home. This may or may not be the case. Evidence has shown that some homeowners will walk away from their homes even if they could make the payment only because the value of their home has fallen far below what it was once worth.

Second, Obama's loan modifcation program requires loan servicers to lower the borrower's monthly payments to no more than 38 percent of the borrower's gross monthly income. The federal government would then subsidize a portion of the payment so that the borrower would only be paying 31 percent of their gross monthly income. Obama's plan does not require loan servicers to reduce the pricipal amount of the loan. The servicer can reduce the interest rate to as low as 2 percent, extend the loan to a 40 year amortization, or forbear a part of the pricipal at no interest. So, if these terms would help you stay in your homne then you should take a serious look at the Obama Loan Modification Program.

Why would loan servicers want to participate in this program? Well, for one, they will get $1000 for every modification plus an additional $1000 each year for up to three years if the borrower continues to make the payments on the loan. The borrower too can get up to $1000 knocked off of their loan principal each year for up to five years if they make their payment s on time.

Of course, in the Obama Loan Modification Program only owner-occupied primary residences will be considered and only those with loan balances less than $729,750. Applicants will have to sign an affidavit of financial hardship and verify their income and only loans originated on or before January 1, 2009 will be eligible for the program.

So, does the Obama Loan Modification Program sound like it could help you? If so, then give your lender or loan servicer and call and see if you qualify.

NEW SHORT SALE LISTING VIDEO IN ROCKLIN!

New Short Sale listing in Rocklin take look at my first video. Still learning how to use the flip!

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Short Sales are getting Approved!

ONE avenue for escaping foreclosure may be getting a little easier to navigate: the so-called short sale, through which distressed owners sell their homes for less than the mortgage amount and are forgiven the remaining loan balance.


More Mortgage Columns As the credit crisis deepened, short sales became harder to complete. Among other things, people who had second mortgages, including home equity lines of credit, found that the second lien holders often balked, fearing they would be left with nothing, or close to nothing, after the holder of the first mortgage was paid off.

Homeowners in these situations would typically stand by while lenders argued about how to divide the proceeds from a sale, and the impasse would frequently result in a foreclosure.

But mortgage executives say they are now working more cooperatively on short sales, and proposed changes in the industry could increase the number of these transactions.

“Without a doubt, lenders are more willing to work through short sales,” said Andre L. Mitchell, the executive vice president of the Lynx Mortgage Bank in Westbury, N.Y. “In this marketplace if the lenders can negotiate in any way to get rid of a bad loan, they’re going to do it.”

The Treasury Department said last week that it would increase incentives for lenders to work out short sales when borrowers fail to keep pace with their loan payments. The department did not release details about those incentives.

Lenders have been eager for direction from the government, especially when more than one loan is involved. “To be able to systematize the negotiation would be a big plus,” said David Sunlin, Bank of America’s real estate management executive.

In the meantime, Mr. Sunlin said, Bank of America has shifted its own policy to encourage more short sales.

In the past, the bank followed the recommendation of Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored mortgage finance business, and gave second lien holders about 10 percent of the second mortgage balance in a short sale where Bank of America held the first lien. When Bank of America held the second lien, it also required first lien holders to forfeit that amount in a short sale.

Now, when it holds the second lien, Bank of America will accept 5 percent of the net proceeds of the short sale, Mr. Sunlin said. When it is the first lien holder, it will offer the same to holders of the second lien.

Banks encourage short sales because they lose less money on such transactions than they do in foreclosures, where they must sometimes carry the house for months before selling it.

Homeowners who are considering short sales can often make the process smoother by involving the bank early in the process.

For instance, if a home is worth $375,000, but has a first mortgage of $390,000 and a second mortgage of $20,000, the borrower might contact his or her first mortgage holder and raise the possibility of a short sale. If that lender knows it can negotiate successfully with the second lien holder, it can start those negotiations and put the borrower in touch with a real estate agent with experience in short sales.

The borrower would then list the home for its appraised value, and the agent, after conferring with the lender, usually accepts any offer close to that amount. After the house sells, the bank pays the agent’s commission of around 6 percent, and pays the second lien holder a portion of the proceeds. Both lenders then forgive the remaining debt.

The borrower is not off the hook completely, since after the short sale his or her credit score is likely to fall. But even then, the credit score would probably be far better than it would be after a foreclosure.

Mr. Sunlin said that homeowners who are considering short sales do not necessarily need to involve the bank early on. He said they can contact the bank within five days of getting an offer on the house and still expect good results.

That is especially true, he added, if documents are presented showing that the offer is in line with others in the local market, as well as pay stubs and other paperwork demonstrating the borrower’s financial hardship.

Mr. Mitchell of Lynx says short sales are often the best approach, even for homeowners considering a new loan to save the home.

“It’s gotten to the point where people understand that sometimes you have to start over,” he said. “A loan modification might help you in the short term, but sometimes what people need to do is get out completely.”
Published by NY Times

I am so glad that lenders are starting to work smarter! Holding off isn't going to help anyone in a short sale situation. On the other hand handling Michael Jacksons estate may be a thriller? RIP MJ you are a lengend, and your music will live on forever! My past client and freind will be at the funeral services tomorrow check out John Hooper on CNN.

Angel Lynn