patrick.net

How much is a 3/2 TH in South Florida?

Patience. Make the exact same offer in another month and see if they are still proud enough to reject you. Nothing we can do will make them accept an offer they don't want to accept. Just as nothing they can do will make us buy a house for more than we are willing to spend. There are plenty of fish in the sea, even if you don't hook that one.

short sales are a miserable affair for the seller and the lender. Is there any information as to WHY they rejected it ? Did someone offer more ? Anyhow, I think you did the right thing. Just let it slip into forclosure- no need to make it your problem.

Every shortsale I have lowballed and was rejected for not being the highest bidder is still for sale, fck them.

What do comps say the price of the home is worth? If the appraisal comes in lower than agreed upon sale price won't your lender raise concern because the house is worth less? At that point couldn't you use that to negotiate with the seller?

Thanks all for your input - As i said isted price was fair and my offer was fair. I've been at this exercise in this market long enough seen and seen at least 5 different townhouses in the same community to judge by.

This thing is so underwater - I mean Marianas Trench underwater. I suppose the lender will try to squeeze every dollar they can out of it...the shame is they'll probably end up dumping it in some pre-arranged bulk REO sale for 1/2 of what I offered. So yeah - f' em

I have a question for anyone that may have an answer. Why are lenders taking so looooong to foreclose on properties? I have an offer on a house that is a short sale (practically every home out there is a short sale). The owner has been living in the house without making a payment to the lender since Feb 2008! He also wants to continue living there as long as possible so there is no interest on his part to even get this going! His realtor is his friend so naturally, he's helping him with delays in getting paperwork to the lender. It's been over 60 days since I made the offer and to this date, there is still no BPO scheduled to take place. I have an attorney representing me and not even he can get anywhere with the seller!

I do not claim special knowledge about short sales, but we successfully completed one for ~300K less than we paid for an East Bay home. Lender accepted an offer of ~175K less than the remaining principal balance. It took some work to get it approved, but my realtor (family) knows their stuff. It probably helped that I lost my six-figure job.
I know that my realtor has been very successful in handling many short sales, but says they are difficult to negotiate.

I am thinking the whole system is rigged - cash and bulk buyers have the inside track and there is some kind of incentive for these banks and their lending depts to go to foreclosure if just to take in as much cash as efficiently as possible.

I just get the feeling that there are a lot suspect relationships, kickbacks and bribes and the like. Maybe i'm being sour - but when something doesn't make sense (like a bank rejecting a reasonable offer on a short sale and later dumping the same property in foreclosure for a 50% or more loss) there is a lot more going on behind the scenes.

hmmm.... ok, so the way I see it is this:

The government is kind of in on it via the interest mortgage deduction

First, the interest mortgage deduction is of course done to stimulate people to move after a couple of years. Who does this benefit? Them - but if and only if - they buy the next house with a large downpayment or 100% in cash. If they do not, then, based on the way mortgages amortize interest (i.e. almost all of the payment in the first 5 years is interest), the people who primarily benefit are the interest receivers of the mortgages: banks, pooled GNMA bondholders, etc......

so, for a likely recent example... young couple buys house for $200K, they live in it for 2 years in a ridiculously booming time - it appreciates to $400K when it should be worth only $250K- they sell to an even younger couple and "trade up" to bigger house - who benefits? real estate agents commissions and mortgage companies, trust companies and lien holders.

Younger couple buys it for $400K "before it's too late" and get upside down on mortgage within 2 years - but then supposedly "blow it" and walk =- nothing to write off, house goes into foreclosure - banks, depending on how they book all this received mostly interest on the 4 years of total payments - so the bank sells the foreclosed house at $250K, and -roughly speaking - writes off $150K of bad debt which saves them taxes.

So the bank received say $50K of interest from the first couple, probably another $70K from the second couple, and then sold the house again for another $250K - so that's roughly $120K in interest over 4 years on a house worth $250K - hmmm.... 48% in interest - who's kidding who?

so why do a short sale when they can get huge tax breaks by letting it go into foreclosure and writing off a ton of bad debt, ie.e reduce their tax liability for years?

Also, if the bank is public, they have categories of assets and their quality. They would rather keep a property on the books as a higher class of asset and foreclose on it than have to write it down into a bad asset class. That way - their stock price (and perhaps the officers stock options?) does not devalue perhaps as much as it would should they actually write down the quality of the properties.

but the place needs some work including a fence replacement mandatory by the HOA.

HOA' are missing the W, as in "WHOA!" don't come knocking on my door telling me you don't like my fence you Bermuda shorts wearing little prick. Then count to ten and mention a gun and then throw in some obscenities. Or it's just best to avoid them all together.

There's plenty of great places in SF that aren't HOA communities. Schulzie. Sounds like they did you a favor.

Fireballsocal says

Patience. Make the exact same offer in another month and see if they are still proud enough to reject you

I would not be so generous. At some future point in time sumbit a lower offer and see if they are still proud enough to reject you.