I have purchased 3 properties via short sale in the last 3-4 years, and I am currently trying to get another one right now....I have an accepted offer by the owners, just waiting on the bank to sign off.

All of them have taken a long time...the banks lag like **** for some reason....just be patient is my advice.

Did the owners agree to your offer? That is the 1st step.....then they have to submit it to the lender (s). If theres more than one lender it can get very dicey........

Generally if the owners like your offer, submit to the lenders...they come out and assess the property to make sure they feel the offer is large enough....and only then will they sign off on it. Then if there is more than one lender they have to agree on who gets what before they sign off.

One of mine took 8 months. EIGHT. None took less than about 3-4 i think....

This is exactly what my realtor keeps talking about. She said a year ago it wouldn't have been a problem. Now most of the time they never even tell you if its rejected, it just ends up in no wheresville and you need to keep looking for another house.

There is absolutely nothing today that would make a short sale take longer than a year ago. It is exactly the opposite, in fact. Short sales are going much quicker because most banks have better systems in place and the government also put policies in place to expedite the process. There is nothing that is different today that would make someone say a year ago it wouldn't have been a problem but today it is. Quite the opposite, actually.

Each bank and situation is completely different, but as a blanket statement to say that short sales are taking any longer than they have in the past is completely false.

Interesting, It makes me wonder.

Whoa, 8 months would suck big time, 3-4 months wouldn't be ideal, but I could live with that. Thanks for your input :thumb:

My realtor told me that the norm is about 4 months after you get an accepted offer. Some banks are harder to deal with and I've been told that BOA is the worst of all of them as far as dragging their feet on short sales. The time frame is supposedly longer if there are still tenants there versus an empty house.

I work in the Short Sale space and have since 2002. As a whole values are on the uptick and it is becoming a sellers market out there. Servicers(lenders) are adjusting their loss evaluation tools to reflect an increased value. They are also looking down the road to how much more they might get for a house after foreclosing on it as opposed to now.

Someone asked if you can walk through a foreclosure or not. If the house is up for auction you can not walk through the home prior to the auction without the homeowner's consent. If the home has been foreclosed on and the bank is the high bidder then it becomes an REO or Real Estate Owned by the bank. The bank will hire an agent and list it just like any other house for sale.

sure thing...

my advice is that if you have an accepted offer from the owners, and what you are waiting on is the bank to sign off on it...just be patient, they have little reason not to...but they just aren't as motivated as you and the seller......even though they should be. If its not such a low price, like a low price thats way too good to be true....and the sellers want to sell.....it might be worth waiting.

In my experience it is the bank thats the hold up, and no one - agent...seller..buyer can speed them up seemingly.

I'm dealing with an REO now. Offers were taken for five days. Myself and three others put in offers. Today, my real estate agent (not who the home is listed with) called to let me know I had until 5:00 tomorrow to raise my offer if I wanted. She's pretty sure I'm higher than two of the offers, but not sure about the third. I didn't know whether to stay or raise my offer...so I raised $2500. It's driving me crazy!!!

I purchased a duplex on a short sale a couple years ago. They basically sat on my offer for 6 months before really doing anything. At that point everything had to be done yesterday or else it was going to forclose. Or so they said. We managed to jump through every hoop they threw at us.

On another note I know someone else who made an offer on a short sale property and had quite a difficult time with getting everyone together. IIRC it was the 2nd on the house that kept screwing the deal. They ended up getting the house for quite a bit less on the forclosure. So it really worked out well for them.

Well, step one is done. The seller accepted our offer. No it will be sent to the bank and hopefully come back to us and not out into the black hole.