Wow, this market can be very frustrating, especially when you are dealing with BofA. Short sales and negotiations are taking forever, and BofA is the prime suspect. These banks have it all, a sweet deal of making trillions of dollars off people during the hot real estate market, the a bigger killing on the refi-boom, then the government steps in and says they are too big to fail, and bails them out and BofA gets 45 billion dollars. Wow, that’s a lot of money, our money (mine and yours), they whine and cry how they need our help when they are the number one reason we can’t get out of this slump!
If you listen to our award winning podcast, “what to expect” you can see the frustrating long process it is to get a short sale done. BofA is notorious for losing files, faxes, and other important documents when it is beneficial to them to stall the process. They constantly play the negotiator roulette, one week you work with one the next they are gone. Then they tell you that everything has to start over again and they need updated files before they can move on, then when you think that it is on its way you are told to call back, then you NEVER hear from them again, and weeks later after phone calls, emails, and faxes, you have to call a different number to fax to a different fax line, or they want you to start over and email them. Then after that, and more weeks have gone by, nothing, absolutely nothing, and no one can tell you what’s going on or where it is, and no one can answer “where are we now?”
Meanwhile you have the property losing value, buyers losing interest, and your hair is falling out and your clients think you don’t know what you’re doing. One problem is, before this the big bad evil mortgage bank was Countrywide, man EVERYONE loved to hate countrywide, then BofA bought Countrywide and decided to eat the poison they were selling and become an even more evil company. BofA is so inept, the right hand has no idea what the left hand is doing meanwhile their foot is in their mouth and they really don’t care, it’s that simple.
Obviously, (all you BofA lawyers back off) this is in my own humble yet important opinion and is based entirely on the numerous occasions that this has happened to me and my agents personally, I am not here just to bash but to scream from the mountain tops that this is happening and its wrong! Another problem is they are backed up, I understand that, but please let’s get some semblance of order, let’s keep the files moving, and let’s start approving deals.
Now our government is also trying to sweeten the deal and pay the banks an extra few thousand for every deal they close, WOW, that should have changed things huh, do ya think? Well no it did not, they are holding up deals and allowing deals to fail every day, regardless of the bailouts, mergers, friendly regulations, powerful lobbyists, monetary incentives, and so called presidential threats. BofA and its investors who hold the notes could speed things up and significantly improve this market overnight.
All this government intervention has not helped one bit, (remember this is the same government who was not overseeing the growing crisis before it happened, and regardless of how you feel about who is in office (he WAS a senator for the years during this crisis) Congress was in charge and they wanted these risky loans, in order to secure votes, and they didn’t prepare for the consequences. Remember many of these congressional leaders have been around for years, on both parties, Frank, Dodd, Reid, Rangel, Pelosi, they have been in charge for many years, and on their watch this happened. So banks are just simply waiting it out to see if the congress can come along and buy them all out again.
Now we have a new idea, coming straight from BofA themselves, let’s get rid of brokers, and those greedy investors (who made a fortune off flipping properties) also want to do the same. Listen I am not saying nor have I ever said that there were not any bad brokers or loan officers out there, there were, but there was a lot more greedy banks and the banks are where the buck stopped, they didn’t have to lend those silly loans in the first place, but they were receiving pressure from Barney Frank, and the likes of ACORN (yes, I said it, what about it? it’s the truth). So the banks that profited immensely now cry foul! Okay, I get it, you got hurt in the speculative real estate market, well, welcome to planet earth. Why punish us brokers who are trying to offload these toxic homes for you?
Why do they always lose files? Why do the negotiators always change? Why do we not have a BPO ordered? Why out of 22 pages faxed successfully you somehow don’t have one? Why do I get a voicemail all the time? Why doesn’t someone return my calls? Why can’t someone shoot me an email with an answer to my question of “where are we now?” Every day we call, we call multiple times and when and IF we ever get a live person that person cannot give us an answer to “where are we now?” So, to all of you loyal readers, and to my clients, where are we now?
I’ll tell you, we are now in a situation where congress is trying to look like they are helping but really don’t want to. Look at the finance regulation, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are conspicuously absent from the reform? (see http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Dems-Dont-Address-Freddie-And-ibd-1664037314.html?x=0&.v=1) And yet they are the main culprits, and they are the closest to the problem and the solution. Unfortunately for us they are VERY close to the problems, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, both have been their pockets since the beginning and still are. I know it’s easy to say Republicans are wedded to the big businesses but we need to look at the Dems too, not assume they are fighting for us. Look at the sweetheart deal given to Chris Dodd, or the looking of the other way by Barney Frank when they were giving loans to people who could not afford them, and Barney wanted to be able to keep those people as votes, rather than keep our economy healthy. They were in charge and THEY need to be held accountable, after all the head of Freddie Mac was paid over $800,000.00 in salary last year, the previous CEO to him was paid $1.4 million. Are we not in a recession here? Why did we bail them out? Please, Leaders of congress were in bed with the banks and throughout history we have seen banks time and time again exempted from reform, or regulations. So where are we now? Headed for even more trouble! And that’s just my 8 cents on the subject……
Ryan S. Carrigan, J.D.
Wow I HAVE TO AGREE!! BofA does suck, with everything that you touched on, and the personal security in checking and saving accounts is terrible. I have BofA and my account was broken in to, for some "unknown" way and they did not give me much information. Luckily i got the stolen money back, but it has made me more cautious then anything. I plan to move to another bank, especially after seeing the man on the news stealing money from an atm from someones savings account. Its insane.
Posted by: Jacqueline Smith | April 15, 2010 at 09:36 PM