Home owners already have given hardship letter and info on their finances to realtor for packet to bank that includes our offer to buy their home on a short sale. Packet of info has been submitted one week ago.
Our house is sold but we have no where to go. We close next week or shortly thereafter. We’d like to light a fire under bank, but that’s not likely.
Bank (Wells Farrrgin’ Fargo) says looking at short sale offer won’t happen for at least another 45 days. >:(
I joked with the realtor about gaining entry to home and squatting there until bank gives answer in short sale. Realtor took that info to home owners who now live in another state and they said “Go for it”. Move in. They are talking to their lawyer to see if they can accept rent while being very close to bankruptcy or if we can just make “monthly payments” to owners for the “purchase of the appliances” (nudge, nudge, know what I mean, nudge, nudge… 
;)) and they are just giving us permission to be there without rent and maybe a least agreement, maybe not….
Lawyer thinks if we move in it might throw a wrench in the bank trying to move quickly towards foreclosing and they might look harder at our short sale offer. (Our offer is around 80% of the homes current market value.)
So, do we risk it? Do we boldly just move into the home and await the bank’s answer to our offer?
Good idea or bad idea?
Oh, also, our offer is about 15,000 under what owner’s owe.
Wells Fargo has fecus interruptus, meaning they are backed up big-time with defaults.
If sellers have a FHA loan, call the loss mitigation department of HUD in D.C., open a complaint case and they will assign a local HUD rep to look into the matter. See if HUD can help with getting the process expedited. The lender will at least pay attention when HUD comes calling. Plus, HUD has the secret phone numbers of people at the top, instead of you clawing your way up from the bottom.
If not FHA loan, the homeowners can also try to call to try to get them to move on your file. After all, they are still the customer (maybe not good ones, but customer nonetheless). The HO still has late charges being racked up while Wells sits on their thumbs so the HO still has something to complain about. If I were the HO or you, I would not be shy about escalating it to the next level up until someone gives a serious look at your file. Make sure your rep knows that you are escalating the issue to the next level.
Regarding you squatting, I don’t it matters to the foreclosure process whether the property is occupied or not. It won’t slow it down nor speed it up. The only difference I see that it could make is that the lender won’t change the locks and secure the property if they see that it is occupied. They won’t know that it is you and not the homeowner occupying the property unless you tell them.
An 80% (-$15k) offer is very fair and if Wells is smart, they would look at your offer quickly.
The one thing that is a monkey wrench for the lender is bankruptcy, although I am not a lawyer (seems like I’ve been saying that a lot lately)…
Good luck.
Thanks for the advice, turborocket! I have the real estate person checking today to find out what kind of a loan the home owners had.
Looks like we might be going into this home within the week. Home owner’s lawyer said the fact that our kids are minors might slow up an eviction process should it come to that. But like you said, if WF is smart…
I’ll keep this board updated on how well or how not well this all works out.
You might want to consider renting instead of squatting. That could put you in serirous trouble if the lender finds out somehow. Put what you dont need in storage and stay in an apartment or with friends until the bank comes around. Hope this helps
steve
I’m working on a short-sale with Wells Fargo & that 45 day processing time is accurate.