RealTown's RealTalk

A buyer's agent writes an offer on a short sale. Asked the listing agent when it would be presented to the bank. Listing agent says he may not present it to the bank, it is up to him to decide which offers are considered, even though it was a good, all cash offer.

What can the buyer's agent do to insure the buyer/client gets a fair shake? Go to bank directly, what are grounds? This is in California.

Thanks for your input.

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Lisa DeSutter
Kastell Real Estate Group
951-226-8509 res
949-394-3699 cell
www.lisadesutter.com
mailto:lisa@lisadesutter.com

Lisa,

In PA the listing contract says all contracts must be presented to seller, verbal or written. It does not exclude short sales.

I would check the listing contract in your area and also see if you have a rejection form that can be presented for the sellers to sign off on.

Rich Goss

RE/MAX at Jennersville

West Grove, PA

Hi Lisa,

Seen this occur before and the results were most unacceptable, not for the Buyer want to be but Seller. Consider this. The agent refuses to forward the offer to the party negotiating the Short Sale (or bank) and the Seller continues to fall further behind, must dig deeper into their savings, continue down the path of maxing out their credit cards... you name it. The result is an eventual foreclosure. And for the Listing agent almost certainly a loss of a fee as the bank will more than likely reassign the listing to their an agent whom they are currently doing business with. It is a Lose - Lose situation that you must use care to get the agent see the light and to move forward. .

Your goal here is to get the sellers agent either assume that the offer is accepted or formally to have the offer signed by the Seller, contingent on 3rd party approval. This does two things. For you your offer is virtually accepted as does not much matter to the seller one way or the other. It is a short sale and he/she is assumed upside down and will net nothing in the sale. Secondly it forces the bank to take action. It is now up to the bank to approve, reject or counter. An experienced Short Sales listing agent will have plenty of showing history to encourage this, and have the bank order a BPO and so on.

And I believe lastly, your state rules as well as I believe federal require that all offers be presented to the seller and if they want to go for it or not. You as Buyers agent have a right to present (not negotiate) your offer to the Seller in person and only the Seller can reject this request. If you do not get the satisfaction you believe is due, talk to your broker. You may have the right to go directly to the Seller.

I recommend that you do not let some inexperienced agent block you from presenting an offer. Demand it nicely. This is why. As a listing agent I took an offer for a buyer customer and was happy to learn that when I presented the offer to the team the seller had retained to negotiate the short sale, took the position of First come, First Serve..... and mind you this was months after listing the property and hammering away at the price. We convinced the bank to ordered an independent BPO and when it came back did not counter. Now for any agents reading this, had they countered the offer, we would of assumed at that point the offer was rejected and would have presented the counter to all other offers that might have been waiting on the side lines.

So hope this helps.

Bart Foster, Realtor

http://bartsells.com

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A buyer's agent writes an offer on a short sale. Asked the listing agent when it would be presented to the bank. Listing agent says he may not present it to the bank, it is up to him to decide which offers are considered, even though it was a good, all cash offer

With a short sale the offer must be accepted by the seller before it is presented to the bank. The seller still owns the house and he (the seller) must accept first. If he accepts then the agent may present it to the bank and the agent will present only one offer at a time.

Shelby Hull

This discussion has been an interesting example of the old story about the blind men and the elephant. Everyone seems to be seeing different parts of the dialogue and responding differently partly because of that and partly because different states have different rules regarding what an agent can and cannot do.

In some states, short sale experts insist that if they are going to handle the short sale for the seller, the seller must authorize them to handle ALL contacts with the lender. In other states prevailing practice prevents the agent from doing this.

Years ago I came across a motto hanging on someone's wall which read, "The things we don't understand, we explain to each other."

:-))