Yes I agree. I didn’t doubt that this person was telling me the truth about the mod. Who knows, the attorney may have dug up the loan docs and found something.

I have not done the heaviest volume of short sales and the two I am in now where I am representing the listing side have been really tough moreso because the buyers have come and gone several times. The current two do represent a dichotomy though, one is a very tough hardship case. The seller has had health issues which caused him to lose his job and subsequently the home. It is a very real hardship case and it has been hard but we have finally got a buyer who is in for the long haul after 3 previous buyers. As you know with each buyer and entirely new package needs to get sent in and basically everything resets (at least with the lender I am working with). The second case is opposite. This is a seller who bought at the peak, then basically bought another home a few months ago and decided to either let the first one go to foreclosure or try to short sell it. He is not distressed and has not missed any payments but by the same token he doesn’t have a huge pile of money either. He has been very cooperative with the lender and we got approval on his short sale but again, it took several buyers to get someone who stuck it out for the long haul. Now the appraisal came in low so we just submitted it to the lender for a price adjustment. They gave a verbal approval but we don’t have the letter yet. In both cases there were two lenders so it was a friggin grind.

In case 1 the sellers really anguished over whether they wanted to sell the home. Actually they listed in the spring of last year, then pulled the plug in September, then tried to do a loan mod, then didnt like the loan mod terms, then called me back to try again. So like you said, it comes down to do you really want the home or not?

However, I have not yet run across a case where the lender flat out denied a short sale but I have not had any cases where the lender was preconditioned by some event with the seller. So yes I suppose it can happen but I have not experienced it yet.