Anatomy of a Short Sale - Part 24 - It Finally Closed!

If you have been following this saga, you may know that I've been reporting on the status of this short sale for over a year. When I took this listing in January of 2009, I knew it would be a long and interesting path, but I never expected that it would take 14 months to close the sale! The seller has basically had a free year's rent in a nice condo while her 2 lenders dithered away their time and saw their expenses in the form of back taxes and HOA fees climb. Within 2 weeks of listing, I had an all cash offer that I had presented to the first mortgage holder. They were ready to close it in 11 days if I could get approval from the 2nd mortgage holder. The 2nd took months to respond. By that time the first loan had been sold to another servicer and so I had to re-start the approval process with them. On the day that I finally6 got approval from the 2nd, the 1st offered a trial loan repayment plan to the seller.

I thought that would be the end of it, but 4 months later, the seller called to say that the terms offered at the end of the trial were no better than what she had before, so she wanted to do a short sale after all. Once again, I quickly found a cash buyer and started the approval process over again. This time, the 1st lender approved the sale relatively quickly, but once again the 2nd took months. Finally, on March 5, 2010, this short sale closed escrow! The entire frustrating ordeal is chronicled in the previous 23 posts under the "Anatomy of a Short Sale" heading. At last it's done...Halleluia!

Peter Nielsen, 415-472-6243. Peter@MarinRealtyExperts.com