Ever had a ‘short’ short sale?

Ever had a ‘short’ short sale? The very thought may bring rolling eyes, laughs of complete and total sarcasm or perhaps just a sigh. OR maybe it brings up a ‘Yes, we have!’ Well we had one albeit with some bumps at the end!

We contracted a property to buy not too long ago which was short sale approved. Not just approved but approved and fell through three times prior. Lucky us? Well we got it under contract and the warm and fuzzy start began. Six weeks pass and bank approval was in. Not bad and time to close was two weeks. All parties would be happy! The sun looked like it was going to rise calmly as if we were at a beach staring at the ocean…

A ‘short’ short sale that will close smoothly. It sounded so good. Almost…

Because of how the deal was structured, we had to go to two offices to close, one for the funding and one for the Seller. A little odd but workable. I sat down to close at closing ‘A’ when my attorney stated how we had a small glitch in the paperwork. Insurance was in my business name instead of mine so we had to change it to my name. Insert Massive RED FLAG! Long story short, the Seller attorney had me personally down as the buyer. We have no idea where she got this idea as my name was nowhere to be found anywhere except in one place where it showed me signing as manager. Upon bringing this up to the Sellers attorney on an immediate phone call, the silence was so long that I think I could have taken a power nap…

Finally I was told I would have to move forward as is. My refusal brought forth an unpleasant response and how there was no way we could close if I did not do it the Sellers attorneys way. Frustration by all built but I held my ground. We would not close in my personal name. The Sellers attorney was going to have to decide if it would close today or not and we put it on them. A company was buying from day one and we were not about to change that. The short sale letter expired today so up to them I said.

Amazingly, the Sellers attorney pulled it off! She got all of the paperwork fixed, had a new short sale approval sent over from the bank, got all the Seller docs resigned and in a span of three hours we went from ‘may have no deal’ to ‘the world is rosy’. Awesome!

And so the ‘short’ short sale happened. With ‘speed’, we got some last minute drama as a trade off but we can handle that if it means not wondering for months if the deal is gonna happen. Eight weeks from offer to closing! The listing agent thought it would never close so she was happy too!