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Last week I had an agent tell me that 95% of the short sales he has worked with have resulted in closed sales.  I asked him a lot of questions and we both agreed that his claim was misleading. Agents like to think that if they are short sale experts they can get bank approval on offers. The bank has the final say and there isn’t anything we can do about it if they decide to take a few months to approve a short sale or if they just say no.  Often we find one person in charge of hundreds of files.  It is not unusual to wait three months only to find out that the answer is no.

Currently there are 113 homes in St. Paul that are potential short sales that have offers on them that are waiting for bank approval.  There are probably more.  Most of these homes, even though they  have offers on them will end up in foreclosure.  Once a home is bank owned it sells for less and the process is much smoother.

Short sales are not foreclosures and even though offers are subject to bank approvals the bank does not own the home.  Short sales occur when a bank accepts less than what is owed on the home as a payoff for the mortgage.   Banks are very slow to approve short sales.  Some agents will say that the bank is quick to answer, and some agents will say they are experts and have a lot of experience.  That is all fine but at the end of the day no one has any control over when or if a bank will approve a short sale.

Sometimes short sales work out and everyone knows someone who knows someone who bought a home that was a short sale and they got a bargain.  It can happen.  It is like the lottery with better odds.  There are occasional winners.