I’m still on my Short Sale Soap Box

Then there's the short sale BPO (Broker Price Opinion) process. The banks are of the belief that an out-of-area real estate agent who is willing to consume hours of their time to drive 60 miles to take photos, develop a market analysis that declares market value and turn their report around in 24 hours for 50 bucks is a better choice than hiring a certified appraiser BECAUSE IT'S CHEAPER THAN ORDERING AN APPRAISAL.

I’ve made it a point to show up for every BPO on my short sales to provide the BPO agent with good comparables, a summary narrative analysis, and a live commentary of the known matters that affect value of the subject property. In many cases, this critical step works in my favor and the short sale BPO comes in where we need it, and the short sale gets approved. But what I’m running into a lot these days is that the BPO agent sends out a $10/hour lacky to take the photos instead of showing up themselves. So I’m at the mercy of this character turning over my solid evidence of market value.

The banks seem to take the short sale BPO as the Gospel of Value. It’s very unlikely that an out-of-area agent working for 50 bucks who pays 10 of it to the lacky is going to provide an accurate valuation. Especially when the BPO agent values the property in a short sale too high in hopes of getting the listing as a bank-owned REO. Big problem. Big challenge.

Now let’s talk about the folks inside the banks. I think I can make a blanket generalization that loss mitigation processors are undertrained, underpaid and overworked. Recently I heard that Bank of America had staffed up its short sale processing center to 1,000 employees. I also heard that BofA has almost 180,000 short sale files in the Equator system. So that works out to 180 files per desk. Considering the average short sale file is 3-4 inches thick, full of financial data that needs to be analyzed, how many of these files could one person whose wage is around $15/hr process in a day? 2? 3?

This example explains why it takes 3 months on a typical file.

Not a week has gone by lately without my being able to tell a new tale of utterly illogical banking behavior. If I only had a dollar for every time I’ve had to say “What the *#%& is the bank thinking???”

And…the rules keep changing…every day…every hour…sometimes every minute.

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