Document Your Short Sale Communications ... Part Six in a Series of Top 10 Short Sale Best Practices

WORKING WITH THE SELLER
Part One: Know Your Loan
Part Two: Don't Sell a Short Sale Short
Part Three: Stay in Touch With Your Seller

WORKING WITH THE BUYER
Part Four: Prequalify Your Buyers
Part Five: Show Me The Money

WORKING WITH THE LENDER

PART SIX: Document Every Conversation, Phone Message or other Communication with the Lender.
You simply MUST document all communications in your short sale transaction. This goes without saying, for obvious reasons. After several months, you memory will fade. It is difficult to piece together every call and every name of every person you spoke with, if it is not written down. You will need records of what has happened if there is delay or error and you are forced to escalate.

Don't rely on the repository of emails and communications in Equator or another short sale processing vendor. Your access to these goes away with a click of a button. This has happened to me. As soon as a short sale in Equator is cancelled, you no longer have access to this data. Fortunately for me and my client, it did not cause a problem in my transaction. Copy yourself on all emails if in doubt. Design a paper communications log for your file and keep a running log of phone calls and emails and the names of each person you speak with.

If calling into a phone bank for an answer to a question, call back two or three times to make sure I get the same answer, documenting each name and the infomation recieved. Trust me, you can get several different answers to the exact same question, and there are some people who refuse to give information, others who will give it up.

Having detailed records protects you and your client if there is a problem. It is critical. Nuff said.

Read on to Part Seven or go Back to Part Five in my Series of Top 10 Short Sale Best Practices.