We are eagerly awaiting an announcement that was thought to come from the Treasury Department near the end of this month. To date, the short sale process both here in Georgia as well as throughout the nation has been a long and grueling process. Many local GA agents will roll their eyes at the thought of attempting a short sale and some have even been known to deter buyers away from making offers.
This new program would give lenders an incentive to speed up the approval process, which would surely be good for homeowners nationwide. But, as mentioned in our last post, would this program even work? There has been a huge learning curve for lenders who have been slammed with thousands of requests for short sale on top of loan modification applications.
“We had a learning curve…Any stakeholder has a right to disapprove the sale. Realtors out there were used to regular sales. Now, all of a sudden, the servicer and Realtor have had to learn a lot,” says David Knight, Sr VP of Default Retention Operations, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, in a recent USA Today interview.
We certainly hope the program helps Atlanta homeowners, but we’re not holding our breath. We try to stay ahead of the curve and embrace short sales, as they are a large percentage of Georgia home sales. Other Atlanta agents may run away, but signs in the market show that short sales are going to be around for years to come, luckily for Atlanta we’ll be here too.
