The Lates Fiascos

Two truly odd things happened in the last month. The first is odd that we received an appraisal on one of our listings based according to the appraiser’s statistics, that they were making a downward adjustment based on the age of the sales used as comparable sales. This is exceptionally odd because the market is really strong right now. The only explanation that I can come up with is that the subject property must have been in a small statistical anomaly that showed that house prices in that micro-section of one of our neighborhoods were going down. That may be accurate using a median price, which is what the appraisers use. If a large number of lower priced homes were sold or very few higher priced homes sold in that time period either of these would have driven the median price downward. Neither the other agent or I can find any evidence of a declining market. Like everything else, you can only trust statistics so far!

The second one was the oddest thing I have ever seen a short sale bank do. We received an approval letter on a short sale that gave the new buyer only 8 days to close, of which only 5 were working days. This is illegal under the time frames required by TRID because there is a three-day rescission period on both the front and back end requiring at least 6 days even if you ignore the impossibility of closing a new loan that fast with inspections, appraisals etc. Despite our protests the bank would not budge because, according to them, the foreclosure sale was 6 days later. The buyer was unwilling to spend money on an inspection and appraisal with that small of a window and canceled the contract. Keep in mind we protested this all the way to HUD. So what does the bank do after the buyer cancels, they extend the foreclosure for another two months despite the fact that it would have been closed with only a 10 day extension on their part. The bank’s response! “Let me check on that.” Nothing has changed!