Although I keep telling myself, and my clients, to not be surprised by anything the banks do in a short sale, it's sometimes hard to heed my own advice. Last night I got the dreaded call from the buyers agent "my clients have found something else and can no longer wait for the banks to approve their offer". This is just so frustrating and despite all of my efforts to keep the first time buyer and the buyers agent involved (weekly updates even though there's generally nothing to report, a slow and steady stream of disclosures, etc) it's just so hard for buyers, especially first time home buyers, to wait out the process. This one was with Wells Fargo and they are generally pretty good with their time frames but now 10 weeks into the 6 to 8 week process I find myself without a buyer. The new MLS rules which everyone seems to think is a great thing (although I disagree), requires the status of the property be put into pending, backup, or contingent, basically meaning that nobody has been looking at this listing for the past 10 weeks.
I'm sure this is happening hundreds, if not thousands of times a day around the country but each time this happens, and banks take even longer than their normally long time to respond, they ultimately end up losing even more money. I realize that there is quite a bit to consider for the banks and their decision, but it seems pretty clear that the normal 6-8 week period once they have and offer really is about 7 weeks of nothing happening and one week of the file actually being looked at. I'm certainly looking forward to the process becoming more efficient and hopefully uniform in the coming months.
It is incrediable how bad the banks are they are just not in any hurry to solve there problem.
It is indeed very frustrating and yes, is happening all over.
With regard to short sales, you need to operate under the assumption that you will need to replace each buyer before you reach the short sale finish line.