There is quite a difference in the way listing agents treat short sales.
Some listing agents will take offers on short sales, pick the highest and/or most likely offer to be accepted by the lender and run with that. Some of these agents may indeed pull the property from ACTIVE status and move it into either WITHDRAWN or PENDING even before they have lender approval. This does not happen alot but a case in point is the property listing on Brome in PQ.
This was a former Battiata listing that languished as ACTIVE on the MLS for 322 days. It had lots of offers but for “whatever” reasons the deal didn’t get done. With a new listing agent the property went into pending status in 8 days. Now the property didn’t have lender approval in 8 days but the listing agent put it into PENDING status for his own reasons. Perhaps the owners didn’t want more showings or perhaps the listing agent was confident enough the offer would be accepted by the lender. Not sure.
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Another common thing may be for the listing agent to accept a few offers and again, select the one that he feels is a combination of having the highest likelihood of acceptance and highest offer, and most competent selling (buyers agent) such that that agent and the buyers know the timelines of how long short sales can be. Thus the agent may submit that offer and hold all the other offers and subsequent offers that come in until there is some feedback from the lender. Now when that lender does give feedback, that listing agent may send a counter to ALL offers, that simply say submit your highest and best counter offer. While this is irritating it does filter out buyers who were halfhearted or who may have moved on after not hearing any feedback.
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Then in other cases the listing agent may indeed select the best short sale offer. Submit it, commit to it and run with it all the way through to completion. As a buyer this is the best for you because you get that committment that you will not be hopscotched. You may want to have your agent add an addendum to your offer that if your offer is accepted by the seller, and thus sent into the lender for review, that the seller will either move the property into PENDING or WITHDRAWN status OR if it is kept as active, that the seller will only accept backup offers. I will say right off the bat that most sellers will NOT agree to this but you can try it if you like.
In the current market condition though… it is very unlikely they accept those terms unless your offer is very strong. If you are lowballing they will not.
The other realtors here have had lots of short sales experiences as well and can add what they have seen such that it may help people decide if a short sale is worth the time and effort. In my book it is but just know what you are in for.
