Wishful Thinking Won’t Close a Short Sale

I’m not from Missouri, so you don’t have to show me the money. But I do have built-in radar that makes me question certain things. If something seems off, I tend to explore it. That’s my nature. I grew up with the expression: Question authority, because I lived through the 1960s. You will notice I did not say I completely recall the 1960s, but I did survive those years.

Today the expression is: Question everything. When one is a Sacramento short sale agent, one tends to question everybody and everything anyway because a real estate agent has a legal fiduciary to her client. I look at what people do and not so much what people say. Sometimes, agents can be bamboozled. Some of them so badly want to hold a deal together that they’ll let things slide and they’ll believe their own wishful thinking. For example, I am working on a short sale in which the buyers were unwilling to meet the bank’s demands. They sent a signed cancellation. Then, after talking with a third-party vendor for Bank of America, I was able to get the bank to agree to look at a different solution.

I presented this solution to the buyers in the form of an addendum. That was a couple days ago. The buyer’s agent says the buyers will sign the addendum. Every time I ask him for it, he says it is coming and he is working on it. But the addendum has not arrived. There comes a point in which somebody needs to be the grown up in this situation. Today is that day. We need to examine the facts. The facts are we have a signed cancellation. We do not have a signed addendum. We have a verbal that the buyers will sign the addendum but the addendum is not in my hands.

It’s nothing personal, but that short sale is going back on the market today. My advice to my sellers is to sign the cancellation and find another buyer who is willing to perform. As a professional courtesy, we gave the buyer’s agent until 9 AM today to produce the document. If it shows up, the home won’t be released to inventory, but I am not holding my breath. I wish people would do what they say they will do. But that’s what they call wishful thinking. If you’re looking for a short sale in the Sacramento area, call me.