End Buyer Funding on a Short Sale

If you're having issues and snafus closing your short sale deals because of your end buyer's lender, you may want to look at controlling that aspect of the deal. It's becoming more and more prevalent these days that snags arise as conventional lending guidelines and seasoning issues get goofier and goofier.

I found that when I have an end buyer use my lender, there aren't any problems in closing deals. But when the end buyer uses their lender, the chance for something going haywire is so much greater.

This happened to me last week. As soon as I got short sale approval, I told my listing agent that I wanted to shuffle the buyer to my lender. She said the buyer is pretty insistent on using their mortgage broker. I called the broker and introduced myself. I explained that since short sales are so time sensitive, and had to close by a certain date, that I preferred to have the buyer use our lender, who can close very quickly.

The broker said she had 21 years experience with fast closings and VA loans. She never had a problem. The buyer was a vet. Against my better judgment, I didn't press the issue to use my lender. BIG MISTAKE. 7 days before the close date, and 8 days before the foreclosure auction, the buyer didn't qualify for his VA entitlement. I was ticked at myself for not following through. This could have been avoided entirely if I used my guy.

We immediately put another offer in to the short sale lender. The investor was Freddie Mac. They declined the offer, saying it was too close to the auction to review and they wouldn't postpone. So they took it to sale.

All I can say is: control as many aspects of the short sale as possible.