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The Point of Contact in the Real Estate Business
One of the little perks given to homeowners in distress through the California Homeowner Bill of Rights, apart from restrictions on dual tracking, is the right to a single point of contact, what we refer to as the POC. That acronym stands for Punch on Chin. No, it doesn’t, it means Point of Contact; you just feel like punching them. It’s nothing to really get excited about because the POC is often pretty useless. It is a person assigned by the bank to answer the phone when a customer calls. I don’t know if that person physically works at the bank in person or lives in Canada but by golly, it’s a live person you can talk to each and every time you call, even if that person is worthless and no help to you whatsoever.
There are no provisions in the new law that says the POC needs to be knowledgable or carry any authority. The POC doesn’t process your file; the POC accesses a computer database where supposedly notes are stored to glean information. As a Sacramento short sale agent who has worked with hundreds of bank negotiators over the years, I can tell you that much of the data that is not always entered correctly. But by George, you’ve got a live person on the phone. That’s a remarkable feat.
More than half of the time, the information the POC gives to a customer of the bank is incomplete or incorrect. I know this because my client will call to say the POC told her, for example, that the hardship letter is not in the file. Not only is the hardship letter in the file, but it’s at Fannie Mae for review. Along with all of the other docs such as the bank statements and tax returns the POC also says are missing. That’s because I am talking to the person who is processing the file. I am speaking to the short sale bank negotiator while the seller is talking to a POC — a POC who would dig through her bag to find an unwrapped Tootsie Roll pop and plop the thing in her mouth without washing it off.
I had a bank offer me a credit card a while back that would cost me $100 a year. At first blush, I rejected the idea because I am not that interested in accumulating points or cash-back bonuses as I always pay my bills in full and never carry a balance. However, the icing on the cake offered by the bank was not really the cash-back bonuses. It was the fact that I could talk to a real live person who would answer the phone through a direct phone number. That is now a luxury today! To be able to call a person directly and have said person answer the phone without punching through a menu or sitting on hold or talking to other doofuses.
There is little more frustrating than screaming Operator at a recorded message and hearing the reply: Did you say: Call Back Later?
The personal touch is missing from so much in business today. You can’t talk to anybody anymore. I was looking for a small business to help me over the weekend, and I was searching online. Most of the websites were geared to the company and not an individual. I don’t want to do business with a company. People do business with other people. That’s why my website features me because that’s what people want. My website is more than a search engine for homes in Sacramento. And I answer my phone. If you need a sharp real estate agent in the Sacramento area, you can call Elizabeth Weintraub 916-233-6759, and THAT, I promise, will make you happy.
Who is Your Short Sale Bank POC?
Sparked in part, no doubt, by the National Mortgage Settlement, short sale banks have appointed a Point of Contact (POC) for most short sale negotiations. These individuals are generally the go-between for both the Sacramento short sale agent and the short sale seller, but they can also be appointed solely for the benefit of the short sale seller. And I use the term “benefit” loosely.
The short sale bank POC is a person — God knows where the bank found them: sleeping on cardboard under a bridge, leaning up against the wall in a soup line — who acts as a liaison for the borrower, typically a person of whom the seller can ask questions. And, if the POC doesn’t know the answer, the POC will make it up. Hey, that’s what they are here for. I will gladly pay you on Tuesday for a hamburger today.
They are also responsible for reading the notes in the file. Notes are generally as good as the information supplied upfront by the real negotiator, the person which some of us are not allowed to speak to anymore because some short sale agents have not been that polite, I suspect. If there are no notes in the file, it becomes even more difficult for the POC to soothe worried souls. Or, the POC could also read another file and pull information from an unrelated situation because after all they are all the same, aren’t they?
None of these POCs ask for permission to contact the borrower. They pull the borrower’s personal information and phone number from bank records. If a seller has changed any of this information or put a “do not call” into the file, the POC either cannot figure out how to call or is prohibited from calling. One of such individuals called me as I was heading out the door to catch a matinee in Chicago of Million Dollar Quartet during my holiday vacation. Said he could not find the seller’s phone number and asked if I would be so kind as to pass along his contact info to the seller. Yeah, I’ll get right on that. I’m not about to ruin her holiday, too. She can hear about it during banking hours.
This is a guy who could have looked at the listing agreement to get that information. Note to self: stop putting that info on the listing agreement because these guys might actually catch on. The last thing a Sacramento short sale agent needs is for the POC to call the seller to call to ask why the bank doesn’t have the . . . you fill in the blank of the name of the document. In most cases, the docs are in the file and the short sale bank POC is mistaken. Maybe some short sale agents fall down on the job, but let me tell you, this Sacramento short sale agent ain’t one of ’em. Being a POC, I suspect, is a thankless job because it deserves to be a thankless job.
