08-04-2009, 08:21 PM
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#1 (permalink)
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Join Date: Mar 2009
Posts: 8
Nominated 0 Times in 0 Posts TOTW/F/M Award(s): 0 | Short Sale Success with Indy and Citi while current on Pymts!!
Total Mortgage = $400k
IndyMac First Trust = $320k
Citi Second Trust = $80k
Current Value = $280k
Location = VA
I have frequented this site many times over the past 5 months mostly to read about the experiences of others and to stay encouraged about my own. Now, five months later, I finally have some encouraging words of my own. Last Friday at approximately 10am I completed a short sale even though I was NOT behind on my payments. Let me go a step further and say I have never missed a single payment nor was I ever late on a payment. I emphasize this point because there have been many questions regarding whether a short sale can be approved if the homeowner is current on payments. The answer is YES!
I started the process back in March after being told that my job was relocating me to the West coast. The first thing I did after receiving the news was call my real estate agent who partnered with another agent because of her short sale expertise The second thing I did was call both lenders (IndyMac & Citi) to inform them of my intention to request a short sale and to find out how to start the process. Both lenders offered to email a short sale packet although Indy's short sale packet can be downloaded from their website. Before filling out the forms I read through all the documentation to make sure I understood exactly what was being asked. Afterwards, I put aside the documents and started working on my hardship letter. Without being too wordy I stated my case. I broke the hardship letter up into four talking points.
1. Emphasizing the fact that I never been late nor missed a payment.
2. The circumstances surrounding my request for a short sale.
3. The potentially negative impact of not approving a short sale.
4. How a short sale approval is beneficial to ALL parties involved.
Although the hardship letter went into detail about my circumstances, it was only one page long to prevent being to wordy and losing the reader's attention. After my thoughts were put on paper I probably took another three days to read and re-read the hardship letter because I wanted it to be perfect with a punch. Over the course of three days I made many edits and iterations.
After completing the hardship letter I began compiling all the documentation that was requested from both lenders (i.e. tax returns, bank statements, etc). Of course at times I became discouraged whenever I thought about the work involved for a 50/50 chance of the short sale approval. Anyway I am a firm believer that you have only one opportunity to make a good first impression therefore I wanted to make the most of the opportunity by providing EXACTLY what was requested. There were no cutting corners whatsoever!
After faxing everything into both lenders, it became a waiting game. For the first month I didn’t call because I wanted to give each lender time to receive and process the documents. After the first month I called to confirm that the documents were received and a short sale case file had been opened. Two and a half months after beginning the process Citi approved the short sale!
Their terms were as follow:
- Promissory note for $8,400 ($100/month for 84 months at 0%)
- They agreed to accept $3,000 from first trustee
- Credit bureaus would receive notification that account was Settled for less than full balance.
- 1099 for written off amount
Citi provided a closing deadline and said if the deadline wasn’t met there would be a $500 fee to extend their short sale approval. Although I was elated to be at the halfway mark, there was nothing anyone could do because Indy had yet to respond.
Another month passed and we were still waiting to hear from Indy so the deadline with Citi came and went resulting in a $500 extension fee. At this point I decided I would call Indy every other day until I received an answer one way or another. I kept this process up for about two months until I grew tired of hearing the same status.........no status! The only bright spot in my constant calling was that the customer service reps were always nice and cordial and sometimes I would get lucky and find tidbits of information that I otherwise wouldn't have known. For example, during one of my many calls I managed to get the contact information for the negotiator’s supervisor. I didn't know if or when this information would come in handy so I passed the information along to my agents to possibly use later. Nothing made sense and no one seemed organized at Indy! For instance, I was told that a negotiator is assigned after the BPO values are received. Well I was given a negotiator two months into the process even though the BPO was not ordered until many months later. Furthermore, my agents made several attempts to contact the negotiator but the negotiator failed to respond to any of their emails. How hard could it be to provide a status we all thought? Nevertheless, I decided I wasn’t going to be consumed by the whole ordeal so I remained hopefully but decided to let the chips fall where they may while my two real estate agents continued to do the legwork by staying on top of Indy. Since the negotiator had yet to respond, my agents reached out to his SUPERVISOR who was very responsive. Although she didn’t speed things up any, she was very responsive which alleviated some of our nervous energy. To make matters worse, Indy provided numerous status deadlines that were never met (i.e. we should have an answer for you in 1 week….2 weeks……30 days, etc) This was nerve wrecking!!! All the while Citi was still standing by and I feared they would make us start the process over!
Nevertheless, Indy FINALLY approved the short sale with the following terms:
- Promissory note $0
- Credit bureaus would receive notification that account was Paid In Full
- Indy would not pursue seller for written off amount nor would they send a 1099
Of course I was elated but now we had to fax the approval to (Citi) to get the ball rolling on settlement. Almost at the finish line I thought to myself as a string of emails went back and forth between the buyer’s agent, my agents, the title company, both lenders, and me. I couldn’t believe it......we were preparing for settlement.
Citi sent over another short sale approval letter since the first approval letter had expired. Everything remained the same except they were no longer requesting an $8,400 promissory note. No complaints here as I signed the docs and faxed back.
Advice:
- When speaking with a customer service rep, I would always say, “I was told to call back today to check on the status of my short sale”. For whatever reason customer service reps were less likely to get annoyed when they felt I was following orders by calling so often. Truthfully I was just being a pest by calling every other day.
- Make sure to get an aggressive agent who is also patient enough to see the process through. Short sales are not for the faint at heart so you need an agent who is professional but also tenacious.
- Always be EXTRA kind to the customer service reps because they were the ones who provided nuggets of information that helped us along the way. For instance, that is how we got the contact information for the negotiator’s supervisor. This one piece of information helped us out tremendously down the road.
- DO NOT turn in a less than complete short sale packet. If you do not have all the documentation wait until you do! Either your packet is complete or its not and sometimes the incomplete packets are tossed aside and sometimes in the trash.
- If you provide all the documentation upfront, you will never have to worry about your lender griping over a missing document.
- If you are in a rush, short sales are not for you!
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