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Does anyone know how long the process is when buying a house that is a short sale?

I PUT A BID ON A HOUSE A MONTH AGO AND AM STILL WAITING. I AM GOING CRAZY AND DON'T KNOW HOW LONG I SHOULD WAIT.

Public Comments

1. It can take a long time. Couple months. Banks are notoriously stubborn to give any information also. Some are better than others.
2. I am a real estate agent and have helped in quite a few of these. My first was over 20 years ago. Lately they have even gotten slower. It will often take a month or longer just to answer a very simple question. If you think about what is happening you may understand why it takes so long. The "seller" owes so much that they can not sell the house at current market rates and often can no longer afford to make the payments. They are asking their mortgage company to forgive them the shortfall and allow them to sell the house for market rate or there abouts. The seller's mortgage bank will want to check and see if this is really an honest sale (and not just to a friend or relative of the seller). They want proof that the seller has no assets to make up the shortfall themselves. They want to know that this sale is somewhere near the market price. The mortgage company could choose to foreclose and sell it directly, but the lawyer fees and lost money and time from taking ownership of the property often makes them want to cooperate of this short sale. But it is a group of employees at the bank making the decision and they want to be sure and keep their job, so they want to follow all the rules and take all the time necessary even if you get tired and they lose a buyer---at least they don't lose their job. If you are on a time schedule don't buy a short sale.
3. Maybe buying short sales isn't for you. Lenders routinely ignore deadlines written into offers, are notoriously slow to respond to offers and move at their own pace. If you need to move by a specific date or have a low frustration tolerance, then writing offers on short sales might be a bad idea.
4. I have been waiting 3.5 months and havent recieved an answer so keep patient and if it is a good enough house maybe it will be worth it in the end. Thats what i am hoping anyway.