Imagine walking into your favorite restaurant and ordering your favorite meal.  Then, the waitress smiles at you and says, “Sure, no problem.  I’ll ask the chef.  He’ll let you know tomorrow if he thinks he can make your order.”

Well, that is exactly the situation when you deal with short sale properties and foreclosures.  The bank has decided to sell a home.  They put a sign out.  They list it on the MLS.  You make a reasonable offer.  Now they make you wait for a month or more for a response.

Is that hard to believe?  The Denver real estate market is saturated with short sales and foreclosures right now.  It seems like we always have a few of these deals pending.  And each and every time I will warn my clients that they are in for a long wait.  But each and every time it still shocks me that it takes more than a month to look at a number and say yes or no.  We’re currently well into our second month of waiting on a couple of deals we’re doing.

This is one area where the government actually has a more efficient model than the private sector.  If you put an offer in on a HUD owned property, then you can expect an answer in about a day.  Private bank?  You’re gonna wait 3-6 weeks for a response.

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 21st, 2008 at 7:36 am and is filed under Denver, CO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.