Here is the latest with our short sale attempt with Bank of America, in case it is useful to anyone. The day after I sent an email to Patricia Pikul (V.P. Loss Mitigation – thanks Seagirl!), I got a phone call from Rick Shults. I explained again about Arizona being a non-recovery state, and that we would be giving up our rights and protections under Arizona law if we were to agree to the “collectible debt” letter. He insisted that we would not be giving up any rights or protections, and that if the Recovery department ends up not being able to recover anything, than that’s the way it will go.
This sounded good, but I was still very leery. So, I went back to my attorney, who practices in Arizona and is familiar with these laws. I sent her copies of the “collectible debt” letters, called her up, and discussed it in detail with her. After studying the letters, she was very strong in her recommendation that we should NOT agree to make our loan a “collectible debt”. She said that despite the assurances of Mr. Shults, we would indeed be giving up our rights and protections under Arizona law if we agreed to this letter.
So, back we go to Loss Mitigation to see if we can get anyone there to understand that this “collectible debt” letter is NOT appropriate for a property in a non-recovery state. Frankly, there is a part of me that feels that BofA is being very, very deceptive in trying to get people in non-recovery states such as Arizona to agree to these “collectible debt” letters. On the other hand, maybe the Loss Mitigation folks just don’t know about this, especially since the Recovery department, which does seem to know, is a completely separate department, and there does not seem to be much communication between the two.
I’ll keep posting as we progress, in hopes that it helps someone else. By the way, the primary applicable Arizona statute can be found here:
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