Rant: Service is key to short sale

In today’s competitive real estate services industry there is nothing more important than client service. I am referring to what may be called Realtor helpers such as title/escrow companies, home inspectors, lenders and others who help us get our transactions completed.

It is this group of professionals who can make closing a sale easy or a nightmare. Over the past two plus years we have been working with a number of clients who would like to avoid foreclosure/bankruptcy by having us negotiate a short sale with their lenders. Trust me when I say, this is not as easy as it sounds. It takes experience, time, sustained effort and on occasion some luck to get all the parties to the sale in agreement. Just this week we had all our “ducks in a row” on a short sale we have been working on for months and want to close this year so our clients can get on with their lives. Out of the blue, our escrow officer went lame on us! She told us something we have been doing for over two years with another escrow company is illegal and if she did it, she would be fired.

Believing we were not crazy, we checked with the other escrow/title company we do business with. They laughed and said showing the additional payment to the second lien holder contributed by the agents from their commission was a no problem. We immediately requested the transfer of the escrow.

The first escrow officer who said she would be fired, but wanting to keep the escrow, sent off estimated settlement sheets to the lenders and got approval. How could we go from “illegal…I’ll be fired” to “…we got approval?”

I love the people in the industry who work with me and make my job easier, provide top notch service to my clients but there is no reason to use those who insist on operating with a “my way or the highway attitude.” In today’s market you don’t get a second chance.