A couple of weeks ago I was invited to attend a seminar sponsored by Bank of America which was designed to help agents who negotiate short sales better understand the new systems they have instituted.  And in fairness, I do believe that the banking giant is trying to streamline the chaos we’ve been dealing with for the past several years….I’m just not sure it’s really working.

I have recently been involved with three B of A short sales, two as the listing agent and negotiator, and one as the buyer’s agent.  Short sale listing #1 was a Cooperative Short Sale, similar to the HAFA program.  It was managed through Equator but took nine months to close.  It was a total nightmare. Listing #2 is a VA first mortgage that is NOT handled through Equator and requires a separate secure email system, (this one has also taken way too long).  And finally, the short sale purchase has a B of A equity line that also does not use Equator or any system, and in fact was moved to three different offices.

So what I’ve learned is that there is no ONE system that is used by B of A, and it totally depends on the loan type.  Now I’m no systems analyst, but it would just seem to make sense to me that ALL short sales should be introduced into Equator as pretty much all the same documents and forms are required.  The file could then be assigned a negotiator in a particular department depending on the loan type, but at least ALL files would be in the same system.

The one good thing that came out of the seminar was that it qualified me to receive access to their new online escalation tool.  So now when I seem to be getting nowhere, and have exhausted the phone and email protocol, I can escalate the file and receive a response to my concern within 24 hours.

If you live in San Diego County and have questions about a short sale, and want to know if it’s right for you, please don’t hesitate to give me a call for a confidential consultation.

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