Click OnThe Bank Of America Image To Watch The Webinar!

From his mouth to my ears, his “take charge” attitude with his entire national team is PRO-ACTIVE and they are VERY interested in helping realtor partners succeed in helping homeowners gracefully extract themselves from under water properties.

B of A actually NEEDS realtors on BOTH ends of the process…meaning, the short sale effort AND assisting them on the origination end. That’s why it’s considered a “partnership”.

Makes sense to me.

He also revealed some interesting statistics that are worth passing on…

In June, 2010 B of A originated 65,000 short sale requests.

They (B of A) holds (services) only 12.5% of its entire servicing portfolio…the balance is owned by 500 other investors…

B of a services 15 million customers…3.5M more than it’s closest competitor.

Currently there are 3,000 Short Sale negotiators nationwide servicing the workload. The end of 2010 will see a total of 4000 short sale negotiators.

At one time, the “rumor” of each negotiators case load hovering between 500-1,000… is TRUE.

Currently, files per negotiator hover at 127 per negotiator.

Strategic defaults will not be considered for approvals per internal and external servicing policies.

OK.

Seriously?

That’s EVERY homeowner’s song of salvation. Unfortunately, sung by a tone deaf homeowner without a band.

What that means is regardless of WHAT information you hear about Loan Mods…ITS ALL CRAP! TOTALLY FALSE and MISLEADING.

It’s the lenders ploy at falsely appeasing an unsophisticated consumer.

Think about it…GOOGLE the term “Loan Modification” and find the sites that track the actual progress and PERMANENT success of loan mods…go ahead…I’ll wait…

OK. So by now you should be FULLY aware that a loan mod is the lenders BEST OPTION at stalling the homeowner from hiring an attorney.

Know this: Loan Modification departments and legal departments of nearly ALL lenders NEVER COMMUNICATE! They’re not in the same building, city, zip code or state!

While you are living your life believing salvation via a loan mod is coming, the legal department is filing a notice of trustee sale because you’ve ALREADY RECEIVED A NOTICE OF DEFAULT;which is why you even were permitted to apply for a loan mod…

Federal guidelines (HAFA) REQUIRE the lender to “process” a loan mod AND a short sale attempt BEFORE they are permitted to foreclose.

BUT wait! There’s more!

Remember I wrote the two departments NEVER communicate?

“Left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing?”

All of a sudden (And trust me on this one. I lost one EXACTLY this way very early on in this game.) you receive a knock on your door.

You answer it.

It’s a man or woman in a constable uniform.

Yup.

It’s THE constable.

Why?

They’re here to help you take whatever you can grab, evict you and change the locks.

Don’t want to go? Think you’ve “Got Rights?”

Not anymore you don’t.

He’ll call more constables and the police and then WILL PHYSICALLY REMOVE YOU AND YOUR FAMILY FROM THE HOUSE…Which is NO LONGER YOURS as it was sold at auction right from under both YOU AND YOUR LENDER!

Listen and listen good.

If you don’t retain an experienced real estate broker with a shark of an attorney to represent you so you can exit gracefully and at least get some relocation cash, YOU ARE UP THAT PROVERBIAL CREEK!

Don’t take my word for it…

The property I will use as an example?

Here’s its address: 247 Summit Vista, Henderson, NV

Check out its history. You’ll see it was listed, then foreclosed. Without ANYONE, EVEN the real estate broker (not me) who owned it, knowing it.

Concerned?

You better be. Because if you don’t advocate for yourself, who will?

Is that the constable I see driving up your street?

***
In another ominous sign for the economy, the number of people falling behind on their mortgages for the first time is on the rise.

This grim statistic is only the latest bad news for the reeling economy. Home sales are in free fall, initial jobless claims remain high and the gross domestic product slowed to a near halt in the second quarter, government reports issued this week showed.

The increase in short-term delinquencies is leaving some experts wondering whether a new round of foreclosures is on the horizon, even as the current wave begins to ebb.

Some 3.51% of borrowers were 30 days late in their loan payments in the second quarter, up from 3.31% at the end of last year, according to new data from the Mortgage Bankers Association. The shift is a stark reversal from the steady decline in short-term delinquencies during 2009.

The blame lies in the sputtering labor market, experts say. More people are losing their jobs, as evidenced in the steady rise in initial unemployment claims, and this is prompting them to default on their mortgages.

“You can’t expect a recovery in the housing market in the absence of a recovery in the jobs market,” said Jay Brinkmann, the association’s chief economist. “It takes a paycheck to make a mortgage payment.”

That recovery is not expected anytime soon. Economists are predicting the U.S. economy will shed 120,000 jobs in August, according to Briefing.com. Few are willing to bet that the private sector will ramp up hiring in coming months.

Short-term delinquencies, meanwhile, will likely continue rising, said Anthony Sanders, a real estate finance professor at George Mason University. And they will turn into a new wave of foreclosures unless the borrowers can land a job.

“This is all negative news for the housing market,” he said.

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS must receive out collective gratitude for playing a part to make this happen.

WASHINGTON — Homebuyers would get an extra three months to complete their purchases and qualify for a generous tax credit under a bill overwhelmingly passed by the House on Tuesday.

Under current law, homebuyers who signed purchase agreements by April 30 have until Wednesday to close on the sale to qualify for tax credits of up to $8,000. The bill would give buyers until Sept. 30 to complete their purchases.

The extended deadline only applies to people who signed purchase agreements by April 30. The National Association of Realtors estimates that about 180,000 homebuyers who already signed purchase agreements are likely to miss the Wednesday deadline.

“We owe this to the people who have essentially followed the rules who are caught by a closing date,” said Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

The bill passed 409-5. It now goes to the Senate, where Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has sponsored a similar measure.

The popular tax credit has helped to stabilize the nation’s slumping housing market. More than 2.6 million taxpayers claimed the tax credit through April — claiming $18.7 billion — according to the Internal Revenue Service.

The Realtors group says the tax credit has generated 1 million new home sales that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

The tax credit for first-time homebuyers was part of President Barack Obama’s economic recovery package enacted last year. In November, Congress extended the credit and expanded it to longtime owners who bought new homes. First-time buyers were eligible for a tax credit of up to $8,000. Current owners who bought and moved into another home could qualify for a credit of up to $6,500.

The Realtors group has been pushing hard in Congress for the extension. Mortgage lenders, the trade group says, have been swamped with borrowers trying to get approved by the end of the month.

Delays with mortgage lending and appraisal companies have meant that home sales are taking far longer to complete this year.

“A lot of lenders weren’t able to handle the influx of loans that came with the tax credit,” said Lucien Salvant, a spokesman for the National Association of Realtors.

There have been particularly long delays for buyers of so-called short sales — ones in which banks agree to accept less than the total mortgage amount. In Las Vegas, for example, short sales made up nearly a third of all sales last month.

Many banks “just don’t have the process to the point where they can do it in a reasonable amount of time,” said Jack Woodcock, a real estate agent in Las Vegas. Extending the tax credit deadline, he said, would be a welcome relief to those borrowers, many of whom “made their decision based upon that tax credit.”

Source: Associated Press writer Alan Zibel contributed to this report.