Short Sale (Loan Servicing Vs. The Investor)

I’m working on a property with three mortgages and am looking for some ideas. Here’s the deal. The property has already gone to Sheriff’s sale and we have two months left in the redemption period. The banks are as follows: 1. National City, 2. Associated Bank, 3. Wells Fargo. Associated Bank and Wells Fargo have both agreed to take $1000 for their positions. Wells Fargo has a BPO on file showing the value of the property as $270k, Associated Bank has a BPO showing the value as $260k and National City has one from January showing the value as $309k National City will not accept an offer I presented for $290k, (I’m the Realtor representing the seller). They say it’s too low; their BPO is clearly inaccurate. They won’t order a new one because they can only order one every six months.

Here is the real kicker; Wells Fargo has been hounding me about when I expect to get National City to sign off on the 1st position. National City I’ve learned is actually servicing the loan for Wells Fargo and they’re telling me that they won’t even present the offer to Wells Fargo because it’s too low. Of course I’ve told them that Wells Fargo has a BPO on file showing the value to be $270k; well below the offer I’m presenting, but they don’t believe me and it appears that privacy laws prevent the two from talking. From what I’ve read about loan servicers they often have a conflict of interest and it appears they’re looking out for their interest and not Wells Fargo’s.

Any thoughts on how to get this done. I’m running out of time.

Try to get the national city rep and the wells fargo rep on the phone at the same time. Then start talking. See what they have to say to eachother. If national city is servicing the loan for wells fargo and you get a rep from wells fargo on the phone with the rep from NC you put the NC rep on the spot. Then, if the NC rep still refuses to play ball and sticks to their BPO you have just grounds to start going over their head to their manager…then the vp of that division and so on.

If you don’t get any place with NC you might want to try pushing on WF and letting them know what’s going on. Try to get to the person who deals directly with NC as the servicing company. It can be a royal pain in the ass and take several days even weeks to get to this person, but once you do you can turn things in your favor rather quickly.

Just keep in mind that once WF contacts NC about the issue and should NC not have a good answer they will more than likely accept your offer and expect everything to close faster than normal. They will more than likely try to pressure you to meet deadlines, and if you’re late on any for any reason they’ll use that as justification to kill the deal. Once they get the ass chewing from WF they won’t be too happy with you but there is a good chance they will get past the current problem you are having.

GooD LucK! :beer