Its the bank’s responsibility to make sure they are not getting screwed.
But good luck getting them to be as diligent as they should.[/quote]
Exactly. Some appraiser provided the lender with a broker price opinion and I’m betting that the buyer in this case at least hit that BPO. Now, the appraisal might be screwed – this happens a lot these days – but it’s the lender’s job to make sure that doesn’t happen. Once someone hits the BPO… the lender will often just take that offer and punch the ticket even though patience would have yielded 10% more.
[quote=Doooh]
Tell me this, isn’t the most prudent thing to do, in this housing environmental we find ourselves in, is to find my own underwater seller who hasn’t listed his delinquent mortgage/home, and convince him to sell to me?[/quote]
Yes. I just did this with a condo – a girl I know sold it to me in a short sale. It never hit the MLS. For reasons I won’t go into, I knew the appraisal was going to be way off as a result of appraiser laziness, so I just hit the BPO with an all-cash offer and the lender accepted it almost immediately.[/quote]
I would also include FHA, GSEs, or any other govt guarantee as a “bailout” to the banks. For all we know, BofA is the servicer, and Fannie/Freddie is the lender. And then there are the artificially suppressed interest rates (enabling the banks to recapitalize), that are an indirect hit to citizen taxpayers.
In other words, there is no way anyone can say that taxpayers are not being harmed by these slimy and unethical realtors. The regulators and politicians need to be made aware of this theft (I’ve informed the FBI on a few, but this was years ago, and they said at the time that the problem wasn’t widespread enough for them to launch an investigation).