When REO Agents in Sacramento Don’t Call

When REO agents in Sacramento do not call, it’s not always personal.

It’s a fact that REO agents in Sacramento don’t always call. However, many of the REO listing agents I know are hard-working and ethical agents. They have a ton of listings to process, and they don’t always earn a full commission because banks negotiate hard on fees. I try to cut them slack when I’m writing offers on REOs because I realize that many REO agents won’t answer or take phone calls. On top of which, banks can take two to three days, sometimes longer, to respond to an offer.

It doesn’t do any good to repeatedly call an REO agent in Sacramento to ask, “Did the bank accept my buyer’s offer yet?” Because when the agent receives a response, typically the agent will call to inform the buyer’s agent of the outcome. Some REO agents don’t call because they require all offers to be uploaded directly to the bank’s website, and that website will notify the winning buyer’s agent.

But no matter what, some REO agents in Sacramento do not call. I guess they feel their time is better spent inputting the “pending” status into MLS to stop other agents from calling them to find out if they can submit an offer. But it’s a really rude awakening for a buyer who is checking listings online while waiting for an answer, only to discover that the home they hoped to buy had gone pending. Then they wonder why their buyer’s agent didn’t call them.

I’m thinking that REO agents should make a practice to call buyer’s agents before they change the status of the listing in MLS. It’s professional and it’s polite. Or at least send an email to the buyer’s agent. It makes me wonder on whose behalf the REO listing agent is working. But I also wish that I could persuade drivers to signal before they abruptly turn. Some things are just small irritants in life.

However, because this practice of changing the listing status — hours, and sometimes days — before calling the buyer’s agents seems to be more the norm than the exception lately, I have set up MLS alerts for those listings. This way, if I find out from MLS that the home has entered pending status, I can call my clients to let them know before they find it on their own.