SHORT SALES are not short and GREED is not good and therein lies more upcoming problems. What, again, more problems? Yup, once again, I am seeing more of the same. The majority of homes selling today are REO homes; bank foreclosures and short sales.
     Now, short sales, typically a sale where the bank is willing to settle for less than they hold on the first mortgage, are still, technically, owned by the mortgagor, usually still occupying the house, however this same mortgagor is usually more than three months behind in his payments, which means, of course, that the bank could foreclose at any time but what’s happening is that the banks are taking 15 and 20 offers on short sales and then sifting through them to find the best one, thereby having half, or more, of them drop out because of this behavior. The banks were greedy when they financed these overinflated homes and they are greedy now, instead of realizing that in a real estate transaction ‘time is of the essence,” which they have turned into a joke. Also, if they weren’t so greedy and their thinking wasn’t so “one-way” they would communicate with the mortgagor more and modify his loan so that he could continue to occupy his home. Although there are exceptions, the majority of these homes are occupied by married couples with children or seniors on a fixed income and many of these people were “taken in” by unscrupulous mortgage brokers and bankers and these same brokers and bankers are “back in business” doing more of the same, which instead of solving the crisis is just going to prolong it. You cannot solve the problem by reverting to the same greedy, devious policies that got you into the mess in the first place but the bankers, led by the astute Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, are doing just that. Remember, Geithner was the President of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York and, to my knowledge, their portfolio is still a matter of half-disclosed truths and Geithner was the final voice responsible for making those loans to Wall Street and his Chief of Staff is a former Goldman/Sachs lobbyist; Goldman, by the way, is “borrowing” $3.25 trillion this year from the treasury.
     Any real estate agents representing short sales and/or REO properties need to get the bank to get a reputable appraiser or broker’s opinion that they will commit to and let it be known that that figure is the sales price, instead of just contributing to the senselessness of some of these meandering, never-ending, bottomless-pit short sales; but too many agents are more than willing to do the bankers’ bidding and are not helping anyone but themselves. And, any agent who will not tell you what they have been offered for a short sale, or any other house, is living inside some kind of bubble and needs to get either medical or legal counsel. What is with this “highest and best” stuff? And where did it ever come from anyway?