Bank of America puts short sales ahead of repossession
Housing Wire – Bank of America, one of the largest lenders in the U.S., has instituted a policy of liquidating as many assets saddled with defaulted loans as possible before repossession, said Matt Vernon, the short sale and REO executive at BofA.
Vernon took the position at BofA in February. He has since announced plans to add 1,000 employees to the short sale staff. BofA currently holds more than 477,000 loans eligible for the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), and has provided more than 600,000 modifications through HAMP and its own programs.
But Vernon said BofA will continue to make the short sale push when he spoke on a panel at REO Expo, being held this week in Dallas.
“We’re going to do everything possible to liquidate property prior to foreclosure,” Vernon said. “REO will still be available, but we will do everything we can to do short sales.” Vernon said the goal is to get as close to market value as possible, or even over market value. “Short sales is not an investment strategy to get homes on the cheap,” he said.
He added that agents who want a part of that market need to make short sales a major part of their business strategy through 2010 and into 2011.
We’ve had two market appropriate offers rejected by BofA on our short sale attempt. We have a third “under review” but just had a notice of sale posted on our door. Their equator program sucks. Every new offer you have to go though the entire online form all over again. Once an offer is rejected/buyer walks, it’s like starting all over again on Equator and you can’t use the same email address. I now have an email address with hotmail, gmail, yahoo, etc. And when they need something, I never get an email to let me know. I need to sign onto the website everyday to check but that’s not good because the site is down quite regularly.
So, in conclusion, don’t believe everything you read. Just because BofA says they are doing something does not mean that they are.
I think that if banks really wanted to move as many liabilities off there balance sheets as they say they do then they need to sell the properties at 50% or less. I think the reason they are trying to sell at market value is because of the cash that they received from the bail out. As a real estate investor I think that it would be in their best interests to work with as many real estate investors as they can to help them remove those liabilities.
I would like to get Joe Wilson to repeat his “LIAR!!!” comments to Matt Vernon for me. I put an offer of $255,000 on a short BofA short-sale, surprisingly within 14 days, BofA countered back at $273,000. We mistakenly countered at $268,000, all of a sudden BofA countered at $300,000…..So after housing data posted that sales were down to a record low for the month of July, the house gained $27,000 in value? We countered yet again at $270,000 and are looking at comparable houses in the neighborhood LISTED at $285,000-300,000. What a joke, I think I will add Matt Vernon to the list of people to I want to send my comments to!
Hmm it looks like your website ate my first comment (it
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I would suggest having a point of view helps when blogging. Be open to other points of view even if you don’t agree with it. There may be hidden wisdom in an area you overlooked or oversimplified.