More Fun With Bank of Amercia

Ever been through a short sale?  If not, you may have heard that they are not “short.”

Here’s a new twist on the complications that the San Diego Real Estate Cafe Crew has seen with the short sales with Bank of America:

We listed a short sale in December, found a buyer, submitted the offer.  Bank of America gave us written approval…and…the buyer got sick of waiting for the property.  Happens all the time.  After a few months of waiting they were just discouraged and disheartened.

And there I was, with letters from the bank allowing us to open escrow and sell the house.

Yay?

No, not so much.

We put the home back on the market.  And we got new wonderful buyers who were just tickled pink about the house.

Now, all that needs to be changed on the bank’s approval letters is the name of the buyers.  Not too complicated but we are all aware that that takes a few weeks or so.  OR close to 60 days and counting….

The buyers provided the exact dollar amount that the bank wanted and here they are, waiting patiently for 2 months and counting.

So we know that this happens in short sale world.  What can you do?

Here is the icing on the cake: Bank of America has a website “Bank of America Learn Your Home’s Value.”  It is a cute little Zillow-esque site where you can input the address of the home you’re interested in and with it’s big red, white, and blue Bank of America logo it provides an overview of the home, a range of comparable price ranges and then (here is that icing on the cake…) they clarify with a firm estimate of the property value.

Was the value that they are willing to accept on their written approval letter the same or different?  Higher or lower?

YOU BETCHA!  Let’s thoroughly confuse every buyer out there to think that real estate is truly the Wild Wild West.  There is a “Bank of America” website quoting an estimated value lower than what they are willing to accept to sell the house.

Of course on further questioning Bank of America said that the website providing that estimate is outsourced to another company and is not provided by Bank of America and does not represent the true value of the house.

Being that I work in real estate, I understand that an “estimate” is nothing more than that, I understsand that only the appraiser is the authority. 

Here is the  question: as a consumer and not someone in the industry would you be totally confused, frustrated, and annoyed by this and feel uncertain about the purchase of that property?  Especially if you were sitting there with around $60,000.00 that you were prepared to plunk down as a downpayment to get this house?  Would you? 

Short sales ARE confusing.  Got questions?  We always have someone to spend the time explaining what is going on with them.  Just email [email protected]