Take Xanax for a Bank of America HAFA Short Sale

In some Sacramento short sales, I want to grab an ax and hack Bank of America into itsy bitsy pieces. Hey, don’t call the cops. In other short sales, I’m littering the doorway with rose petals. There is no one-size-fits-all explanation when it comes to a Bank of America short sale. But there is also no middle ground. No median. It reminds me of that nursery rhyme about the girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead. When a Bank of America short sale is good, it’s very very good. When the short sale is bad, it’s horrid.

I tell my short sale sellers in Sacramento that there are two kinds of customer service reps at Bank of America: the brilliant and the morons. Nobody in between. They always laugh, but they and I know it’s the truth. I am also at an advantage with that statement because I know by the time a seller gets to me, that seller is pretty much ticked off at Bank of America. That seller has probably tried to do a loan modification and failed, often miserably. I don’t have to do much to poke the hornet’s nest and find common ground.

By the time a seller calls this Sacramento short sale agent, the seller is often exhausted, tired and angry. Oh, they can try to disguise their anger, and most do try to be polite, but I hear it in the cracking sounds of their voice and I see it in the fire raging behind their eyes. Bank of America has pushed them over the edge. They’re not even sure if they want to do the short sale because they are worried it will favor Bank of America in some way. Or, that the bank will reject their short sale. There’s fear and loathing. Believe me, I understand and empathize.

Moving a Bank of America short sale forward has its roots in patience. In not expecting too much from bank employees. Lowered expectations is key. Especially for a Bank of America HAFA short sale. A HAFA can expire. You’ve got about 4 months to close a HAFA. When you have a Bank of America HAFA coupled with a Green Tree second mortgage, that’s a lovely treat. Because Bank of America will take so long to approve the short sale, the Green Tree file will close. Green Tree keeps its files open for 90 days, and then they close them.

Those pesky laws about time frames in a HAFA? Ha. Bank of America thumbs its nose at those laws and slaps your face twice with its glove.

By the time we received short sale approval from Bank of America for our last HAFA short sale, Green Tree was long gone. We reopened the file with Green Tree and pushed. More than 60 days later, Green Tree issued approval, but then the Bank of America HAFA had expired. Could the bank extend? Yes, but it refused. Instead, Bank of America closed the file and reopened it, started over from scratch. New RASS, new TOS, new BPO, new HUD, it’s a new day at Bank of America, and it’s welcome to more hell for these Sacramento short sale buyers and seller.

On Wednesday, I sent a Tweet to the Social Media team at Bank of America about this file. I’ve Tweeted them so many times over this that they ignored the Tweet. It’s very unusual not to get a call back from Bank of America. I think I wore out my Tweets. The negotiator noticed the ZIP code was wrong. She asked me to send her a change of address when it was Bank of America that entered the wrong ZIP code. Oh, please.

We have a buyer’s loan about to expire if we don’t close by the end of the month. We have the Green Tree second loan going to charge-off at the end of the month. And we have a Bank of America negotiator lamenting about a ZIP code on a file that had already been approved once. This was already an approved HAFA short sale at Bank of America! Slap the Xanax into my hand.

I hope that today is the day we receive the new approval for this Bank of America HAFA. That’s one thing you can count on from this Sacramento short sale agent, I never give up hope.