How Banks Goof Up When Pricing Sacramento Short Sales

As a general rule, short sale banks don’t take condition of the home into consideration when pricing Sacramento short sales. I don’t know why, either, because it doesn’t make a lot of sense. You can try to sell a home that suffers from deferred maintenance and maybe it needs a new roof or HVAC system, repairs that could cost upwards of $10,000, and yet the bank won’t consider deducting those costs as an adjustment to market value.

To a short sale bank, all homes in Sacramento are exactly the same when they are similar in age, square footage and layout. In fact, to a short sale bank, even a two-story home is the same as a one-story home. These facts are also a reason why banks are not in the real estate business, because they don’t really understand the real estate business. The bank doesn’t care if the home down the street sold for $20,000 more than your home is worth because that home has a brand new pool, and your home does not. The bank will think you should be able to sell your home for the same price.

This is also one of the reasons why the banking system got into such trouble and hot water in the first place. You would think that a requisite to lending hundreds of thousands of dollars would be a basic understanding of real estate principles, but I haven’t seen that to be the case.

Valuation problems have always been a stickler in a short sale. I know that when I list a short sale that needs work or repairs, it will be difficult to get the bank onboard to sell it. It doesn’t mean it won’t sell or that eventually some poor fool won’t stumble along and pay more than the home is worth, because sooner or later, anything will sell. If it doesn’t rot first. Banks are in no rush. This Sacramento short sale agent can wait as long as they can wait, maybe longer. I will continue to fight for my sellers.

This morning a bank out of Chicago sent an email and asked me to send all offers we receive to the bank. They’ve got to be kidding. No, on second thought, they probably are not. But that doesn’t mean they are getting all offers. That’s between the seller, the buyer and the agents involved. Once we receive an offer that is acceptable to all parties, you can betcha, we’ll send it to the bank.