See this buyer is an investor, who wanted to try their hand at negotiating a lower offer in a short sale situation. This negotiating back and forth is very common when offering on a bank owned property, but short sales operate rather different in these situations. A lender countering on a short sale will almost always give it's bare minimum if the buyer's offer doesn't meet their net. This is usually because there's already a fair amount of time spent waiting on the decision of the offer in the first place and the short sale lender isn't set up to go back and forth on pricing. Another reason is that the lender reviewing a short sale offer doesn't give much of a 'discount' on pricing. They have a minimum they must meet in this stage of foreclosure and give that minimum in the form of a counter to the buyer. Banks are much more forgiving in their 'discounted' price, especially if the home has been on the market for a lengthy time or you're a cash buyer that can close in two weeks. This is one of the reasons that investors don't typically purchase short sales, as they've had experience trying to negotiate a lower purchase price in exchange for a cash offer with a quick close.
Now we are waiting, waiting on the lender to generate the approval letter on the accepted counter. This process likely would have taken less time had the buyer accepted the lender's counter in the first place. The lender had to re-open the file so the offer could be submitted to the investor and now that we're in the redemption period, there has to be a manual review of the package before the letter can be issued. We've been waiting almost two weeks now, when we may have only had to wait a few days had the buyer moved forward when the counter was first received.
If you have questions about offering on a short sale or negotiating a purchase price with those lenders, feel free to give me a call or send me an email as I'd be happy to help shed some light on these situations!
