sd_matt, I don’t think banks have to meet sales targets in a given calendar/fiscal quarter. What I’ve heard from accountant friends, is that internal and external auditors are pressuring the banks (very effectively) to mark their assets to market.
Without this “pressure” banks’ asset managers would be happy to keep a REO property on their books at a fantasy price (say, whatever the defaulted loan amount was). Over time, as they value their assets at more realistic prices, it becomes easier to sell them because they are not as ridiculously overpriced as only a year ago.
