The Florida Association of Realtors show that South Florida existing home sales continue to rise. The median single family home price in Broward County rose from $190,000 in May to $204,800 in June. At the same time, the number of foreclosure sales and short sales has dropped from 44 percent in May to 39 percent in June.
I have noticed that many homes that have been foreclosed are not listed for sale and homes undergoing a short sale are taking longer to get approved. If I had to guess the reason, I would speculate that banks are overwhelmed with the number of properties in trouble and do not have the manpower to handle them. My own experience in selling short-sale homes has been exhausting and disappointing.
Currently I have two listings with short sale contracts on on their single family homes. The offers are cash, no financing. The price that was negotiated by the sellers and buyers are at market value. However, it has been more than 3 months since the offers have been submitted without an approval from the banks. Each time we contact the banks, if we are willing to wait the 45 minutes it usually takes to get through, we are told a different story, anything from “We don’t have approval from the seller to discuss the sale with you”, (even though the approval has been faxed to the bank multiple times,) to the very odd statement that “The person who was handling the file no longer works here.” When we finally do get someone to help us with the file it usually leaves their hands within 48 hours and is sent to another person for processing.
Banks do this in order to keep the transaction at arms length; there are no relationships developed and the process is very impersonal. In their defense, most of the banks are not even located in the state where the transaction is taking place. The staff is paid hourly and have no incentive to close a sale. Until something is done to require banks to make decisions on fair market offers within a specific time frame the real estate market will continue to struggle. In the meantime, I believe we will see changes in the market and qualified buyers are wise to purchase a home based on its availability if they want to close by the end of November to obtain their first time homebuyer tax credit.