I have consistently posted about short sales. Indeed what you said janet can be the case many times, that the pricing is artificially low to get offers and then clean out the pipeline. Yes it is a VERY slow wait. I will not throw in any commentary on Battiata listings but looks like you have become familiar with them. Now when you said your offer was accepted did you actually receive your offer back fully executed and accepted by the seller? Or was it simply verbal?
Your agent should have advised you a bit better on the mechanics of the short sales especially if you started to get involved.
Now regardless of whether the property is vacant or not, if it is a short sale and not REO then the property still belongs to the homeowners. As far as the bank playing games, yes that DEFINITELY sucks. In fact in many cases I am seeing agents that have short sales going with offers into the banks, stop accepting offers so that they will not slow down the acceptance process. In your case it sounds like your offer was accepted, then sent into the bank, then more offers were sent in at a later date. While this does help with the probability of the offer getting accepted, it also SLOWS down the process as the bank has to then essentially start the review over again.
Finally, even with acceptance by the bank, potential short sale buyers are not out of the woods. Banks differ on how they will treat the seller of a short sale. In some cases they will release the seller from the obligation of the deficiency altogether. Basically a walk away free card. In other cases they will not authorize the short sale (release of lien) without the seller signing an acknowledgement of the deficiency and basically creating a new note of whatever the deficiency amount is. While this note is not secured by anything it is still a note. I have recently had a case where the bank accepted the short sale offer but would not release the seller and wanted the seller to ack the deficiency. The seller did not and thus the deal has fallen apart and the seller has said screw you bank, come foreclose on me.
Anyways it is all frustrating and tough to cope with. By the same token I recently had two short sale offers accepted by the bank that were submitted about 10 and 13 weeks ago respectively.
I know that many people think short sales are not worth the time and effort. However some of them really do close. You have to have a certain mindset, you cannot be impatient, you cannot get emotional, it helps if your agent is familiar with them but more important, the success will really depend on how the listing agent deals with them.
