Short sale nightmares

I saw a beautiful Livonia short sale home about 3 months ago with one of my clients. At the time the listing was being touted on the MLS as "short sale approved". My clients were two weeks late on putting in an offer and their offer was going to be a back up offer. The listing agent marked the Livonia short sale home pending and my clients bought a different Livonia ranch home.

My clients were about two weeks before they closed when the other listing agent with the other short sale called. His deal had fallen apart. He wanted to know if my clients were interested. I said no, but I told another Remerica agent in my office about the Livonia short sale.

The other Remerica real estate agent talked to the listing agent. The listing agent said the short sale was just two weeks away from closing. So the buyers agent put in an offer, go it accepted, and rushed the mortgage person to get it ready to close. They had it ready to close. Unfortunately the listing agent wasn't ready at that time.

Then 60 days later the listing agent scheduled the closing. Everybody was at the closing table only to find out that the 2nd mortgage company never signed off on the sale. So it didn't close. It was never close to "SHORT SALE APPROVED''

The listing agent didn't know what he was doing.

He didn't have a clue.

His title company should have never scheduled a closing without the approval from the second mortgage company.

Unfortunately this happens a lot when buying and selling Metro Detroit real estate. Some metro Detroit real estate agents just don't know what to do when working with short sales. So every time I do a short sale I ask the listing agent questions. I can ferret out some of the issues and problems that might arise and whether the deal has a chance of closing. Unfortunately we can't always tell when the listing agent doesn't know what they are doing or when they are "fibbing" about the short sale.

So the bottom line is: whether it is a Livonia short sale home or any Metro Detroit short sale there is a chance that is may not close. There are things that you can't control, things the listing agent can't control, things the seller can do to make it close. So let your agent ask the questions and listen to your agent's gut instincts.