Time is on my side, yes it is...

I have no real excuse for being so late with my posts. The Buck Stops Here!

However we have been very busy providing short sale services on about 60% of our transactions. So not only do we need to have the buyer approved and well qualified to purchase, the sellers' lender must approve a short payoff to the mortgage (they get less than the original mortgage amount).

I must say that our whole housing/finance system is in a bit of a logjam. Truly I don't see the largest problem with the real estate "market". There are still lots of buyers who want to buy and sellers who want to sell. On the buyer side many restrictions are in place (some would say this is good business, I'm not disagreeing). I do however believe that lenders are running scared and have overreacted which is causing one part of the "credit crunch" you hear about on TV. The other side is that if demand falls (and restricting credit becomes self-fulfilling prophecy) then prices fall as well. This wouldn't be such a problem but many homes were sold or refinanced in the last several years at 100% or more of street value. So many of these homes are "upside down" today. And to sell them the banks have to approve the transaction.

This post isn't to get into the whys and hows but just to talk about today. I hope that we can push through this quickly. This will mean that the lenders have to approve short sales and workouts at breakneck pace. It seems our transactions today can be 5-6 months (even with a buyer and seller ready for a 45 day transaction). When transaction cycle time is stalled everybody is hurt. The buyer has to wait to make his upgrades, has to wait to spend money at Home Depot and Lowe's, wait to spend money in his community... and the seller has to wait to move and do the same. I believe ultimately the lender loses because it's 4-5 months to wait to get his asset performing again as well. It's economically viable; in business you always want your assets working. And while a bank stalls in committee on an approval for short sale, they are losing the chance to make money on that asset.

In this case time is not on our side. This is where much of the time of Realtors (and attorneys, and mortgage brokers..) is going as well. I think we can do better than this. I hope we can get together and put on our thinking caps and get things moving again. We're in this together. Let's go America!