Bank of America is Pro Short Sale

Bank of America has a message for underwater homeowners in Sacramento, it appears. That message is: Bank of America wants to do your short sale. People have heard all of the horror stories about the many, many months it takes to do a Bank of America short sale, and that is not always the case. In fact, it’s rarely the case. This Sacramento short sale agent can initiate and close a Bank of America short sale, from start to finish, in about 45 days. Even without a hardship. Yup, Bank of America is granting strategic short sales and all kinds of other short sales just to get rid of those loans, for whatever reasons.

For example, you might ask when is a HAFA short sale not a HAFA short sale? Because sometimes homeowners don’t qualify for the HAFA. There is a new law that says the banks must explain what constitutes qualification for a HAFA because that’s been left up to each bank to decide, and often that method is a complete mystery. Well, far as I can see, it still is a mystery. We can do our best-guess-scenarios here in Sacramento, and I have few theories myself, but nothing in concrete as to the exact criteria used. So, in that regard, nobody can really figure out if the bank is handing out crap or what because the bank still writes its own rules.

In any case, a HAFA short sale is not a HAFA short sale when Bank of America says it has switched to a Cooperative Short Sale. We started out with a HAFA application for a home in Natomas, a neighborhood in Sacramento in which almost every home is a potential short sale if it hasn’t recently sold. Somewhere in the middle, Bank of America switched the short sale to a Cooperative. If you ask the bank, it will tell you that you need to initiate the Cooperative short sale before you have an offer, not after an offer has been presented to the bank. It will also tell you it doesn’t do Cooperatives in which there is a second loan. But they make exceptions. This home had a second loan. I have, in fact, done other Cooperative Short Sales in which there was more than one loan, and that second loan was not held by Bank of America.

There are exceptions to everything. The banks decide what they will except and which variances they will not grant. That’s the thing about short sales. They use the rules when it’s to their favor, and they ignore the rules when it’s to their favor.

So, if you think you know exactly which end is up and what you are doing, then you are most likely not a Sacramento short sale agent working on a Bank of America short sale.

This Bank of America short sale closed yesterday as a Cooperative Short Sale, paying the seller $2,500 and releasing both the first and second mortgages without liability.