Orlando Real Estate

Went to courthouse this morning to get an extension on the sale date for one of my customers. I have a short sale contract on her home, and even received notification that the sale was approved back in January. There were just two problems: first, Bank of America never sent the short sale approval to me; second, they approved the sale at a much higher price. I took the price to the buyer's agent, and they countered the bank's price. At that point, I effectively hit a brick wall. I contacted my negotiator, who told me that we would have to start the file over again (the fourth time) unde the new www.equator.com system. I asked for her supervisor's name and contact information, because that was not acceptable. The supervisor never even opened my e-mail.

After repeated attempts to communicate with the negotiator and her boss, I received an e-mail stating that all files must be submitted through equator. They actually will not even take calls at all now. Then I received a follow-up e-mail from the negotiator stating the file had to be submitted into equator - which I had already done at that point. Then my seller received notification that there was a hearing today to set the sale date on her home. We went to the court house to ask for an extension on the sale date, which we did receive. The judge did not make a new friend in me though, as he sat on his bench and began to deride Realtors. He said to my customer that "Your Realtor does not represent you or your best interest, he is only interested in representing his interest in getting paid." I paraphrased a little bit, but that is pretty close to what he said.

Then he went on to brow beat my customer about why she was going through a short sale instead of just letting the bank foreclose. I did not open my mouth, because I am not an attorney and his questions were directed at my customer. I really had to bite my tongue though, because he was basically using his bench as a bully pulpit as Teddy Roosevelt would say. In the end we received what we needed to hopefully get this short sale behind us, but he was a shining example why judges need to be elected. Here in Florida we vote to "retain Judge (your name here)", so they tend to keep their bench. When I got back to the office and spoke to my broker, he told me the same judge gave the same speech to another agent in our office just a few days ago.

David Welch Real Estate Optimist, Orlando Real Estate