My understanding of short sales is that they're messy and complicated. Your realtor may have done the best she could considering the situation. But then again she may not be experienced in handling a difficult short sale situation. If she's done short sales before, I'd give her the benefit of the doubt. If she hasn't and you're pursuing a short sale, you may want to find an agent that is experienced in short sales. I've also heard that in short sales you should bring your best offer, negotiating with the bank is cumbersome, tiring, difficult, your best offer has a better chance of being accepted.

A bank is not allowed to deal with a mortgagor's potential buyer before they own the property. I, as a buyer, could not present any offer to the bank. The offer would have to go through the homeowner.

A bank/lender negotiates a "short" sale with the mortgagor.

I did not understand exactly what you were describing in the original post. If you could provide a few more details, I might be able to answer some questions for you.

1.) Who owned the property? If it was the lender...it's not a "short" sale. It's an REO (real estate owned) & likely a property they foreclosed.
2.) Who did you make your offer to?
3.) Was there a seller's agent involved?

/t

Triciae  your comments make sense with what little I knowÂ

1) Who owned the property?

I was told that the homeowner owned the property. I was led to believe that it was not an REO nor was the house in foreclosure. The house was vacant when we saw it and made our offer - I think that was last March We were also told at some point that the entity holding the note "went under" and was "taken over" by another group which delayed things further. I found it hard to believe that a bank (or whom ever) would agree to accept a short unless the owner was not able to make the payments. If the owner was not making payments  why did the bank want to sit on an empty house when they had an offer for more than they agreed to accept? None of it made sense to me. :-)

2) Who did you make your offer to? 3) Was there a sellerÂs agent involved?

There was a sellerÂs agent and our agent made the offer to him. I was told that the sellerÂs agent had only been doing this a short time and he was not very responsive to phone calls.

There was a lot I didnÂt understand and I didnÂt try very hard to learn IÂm afraid. We had so much to do to get our current place ready to rent (our kitchen was drywall only!) that we turned all our attention to it and believed our RE was handling things. The truth is  IÂm not sure even DH wanted the house by this time but thatÂs not the point. I need to believe that we have an RE who is capable of doing right by us and my confidence has been shaken. But before I wrongly judge her and look for someone else  I thought I would ask here :-)

It sounds to me like your offer might have gotten "lost" in the shuffle of the original lender going under. You are correct in that a lender would not normally accept a "short" payment unless the borrower's were seriously delinquent, the property appraised for considerably less than the outstanding note, & the lender believed they would be unable to recover any deficiency from the borrower after a foreclosure.

Quite possibly, the offer that was ultimately accepted came in after things had settled down a bit after the institutional take-over. The bank officer may, or may not, have even known about your original offer. Your realtor should have tried to follow up; but, in all fairness it may have been quite difficult in these circumstances. It sounds like a case of one hand not knowing what the other was doing on the lender's part.

/t

Your realtor should have tried to follow up; but, in all fairness it may have been quite difficult in these circumstances. It sounds like a case of one hand not knowing what the other was doing on the lender's part.

But isnÂt that her job? Someone obviously got through to the decision maker. Unless there were nefarious tactics at play  shouldnÂt she have been able to stay on-top of things? She knew she was dealing with an inexperience selling agent  shouldnÂt that have made her even more diligent? At one time in the last few months, my DH saw the house listed in a way that made him think it was sold (I canÂt remember the exact wording). He called our RE who seemed shocked and surprised and called back in a day or two saying that the selling agent had made a mistake due to his inexperience and that it was still in limbo. Sometime between then and now it sold. I donÂt even know whenÂ

I just checked Zillow  according to Zillow it sold on 08/03/07