Fannie Mae and Other Things That Don’t Work Right

It seems like I have to fix a lot of things that don’t work right. It’s not necessarily that they are broken as much as it is they simply don’t work correctly. Stuff goes haywire. In fact, I am so used to things that don’t work right that I have become somewhat complacent. I don’t get upset over it. I just fix it.

Almost nary a day goes by when I don’t run into some short sale negotiator telling me the bank won’t authorize seller credits on the HUD.  Since when did a bank negotiator become a HUD expert anyway? I realize they don’t know how to read a HUD. If they had to prepare a HUD from scratch, they’d be up a creek without a paddle. Yet, here they are telling me to remove fees that are not credits under the assumption they are correct. They’re not correct. This problem has become so commonplace that I keep a stock answer prepared and ready to email. They don’t work right.

Last Friday my company email went on the blink. Stopped downloading to my computer. None of my settings changed. My email client stopped receiving. The company’s exchange server was not updated or altered. The IT department signed on to my computer to check but they couldn’t find anything wrong, either. We ended up doing a redirect. Because it doesn’t work right.

Yesterday we had to call out an electrician to remove a bulb from a kitchen pendant. We’ve had the pendants fixed twice. Third time they stopped working, we bought new pendants. None of this Lumen’s back-basement discount crap. We ordered blown-glass Oggetti. Then, the darned burned-out bulb got stuck in the socket and a wire connection busted. That’s why it doesn’t work right.

In many Sacramento short sales, I routinely encounter the dreaded Fannie Mae problem with second loans. Now, I heard a guy at DTS admit the other day that they kick out Bank of America Cooperative short sales when the investor is Fannie Mae. He said DTS has had too many problems with Fannie Mae. Because Fannie Mae is a government-sponsored entity, it doesn’t work right.

Fannie Mae has guidelines that are often somewhat restrictive. Like telling borrowers to stop making mortgage payments. Yeah, that’s your government telling you to go into foreclosure. Or, choosing foreclosure over a short sale by refusing to postpone a trustee’s sale. Another involves the payment it will approve to a second lender. Second lenders want to negotiate and try to get more, but Fannie Mae won’t allow it.

Most second short sale lenders realize the problem with Fannie Mae. They tend to get on board. Especially since Fannie Mae rarely makes exceptions. I even had the gatekeeper at Green Tree back down on a second demand a few months ago when I explained that since Fannie Mae was the investor he needed to accept 6% of his unpaid balance. He said: Why didn’t you say so? As though telling him my name was Dorothy would get me into the Emerald City. The system for some second lenders, though, is broken. They don’t work right.

And you can’t fix Fannie Mae.

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