A Letter to President Obama From My Home Buyer

I have a client that has been in a 5 month process to buy a short sale. It has been very frustrating for everyone, me, buyer, seller, new lender and listing agent. The short sale process is utterly ridiculous. We even have an attorney working for both the buyer and seller to try to get the short sale approved. My client has remained very calm for the last 5 months waiting for some sort of response from the bank . Of course, we have received the typical vague answers that the banks are programmed to say.

So, out of frustration, my client wrote a letter to Barack Obama about the whole ordeal. He doesn't really expect the President to answer him but I am sure he felt better after he wrote it. I posted the letter below or you can read it here. You might find it amusing. If you have worked on a short sale lately I am sure you can relate to his frustration.

Dear President Obama,

I am currently entangled in a 5 month long real estate "short sale" purchase. For the first time in my 40 year life I have hired an attorney. Despite my efforts and patience I am no closer to purchasing this home than I was 5 months ago when the process started. During the five months I have heard everyone say the short sale process is ridiculous, flawed, dysfunctional, etc. but nobody has done anything about it. Maybe you can! 

My suggestion would be to push a bill through requiring lenders to respond to a short-sale offer within 30 days with either an acceptance or a counter offer. If the lender does not respond then a judge/arbitrator would have the ability to approve/disapprove the sale. If a lender does not want to sell the house they can simply respond to the buyer's offer with a counter offer that is really high. This sends the message to the buyer that the lender just does not want to sell the property for a loss and the buyer can move on to a different property. Currently, the lender simply withholds a response indefinitely and everyone involved in the situation sits in eternal limbo.

We, the American people, have poured billions of taxpayer money into saving these lenders from themselves only to have them do nothing to improve the real estate situation. I think the lenders owe us (that’s all of us, buyers, sellers, real estate agents, lawyers, construction workers, mortgage brokers, title companies, appraisers, local governments, etc.) some action.

According to my attorney, Bank of America only has 8 employees for the entire country responsible for negotiating these short sales. How can a company with billions of dollars on the books only employ 8 people for this? We need some pressure on these big companies to meet some reasonable timelines because their stalling tactics are only serving to stall our nation's recovery.

I could give you plenty of details on my situation but in the interest of brevity I have omitted them because I believe they are no different than the thousands of other families that are experiencing this same situation. Please feel free to contact me for further information if needed.

You are the most talented man we have had as president for a long time and we all wish you well.

 

Name withheld

Sarasota, Florida.

Sarasota Homes For Sale

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