At this time last year, Bank of America was on my black list for short
sales. I would still work with short sale clients that had Bank of
America loans, but I had to make an extra effort to mentally and
emotionally prepare sellers for a process that could take six months to
a year from signing the listing to signing closing papers.
Several
months ago, Bank of America started using the Equator system (formerly
REOTrans). Equator is the technology platform used by many of the top
lenders nationwide for handling bank-owned property transactions.
Equator built a short sale portal to be used by Bank of America (and
eventually other lenders) to help streamline the short sale process.
While the transition to the Equator system had its challenges, Bank of
America’s implementation of this online system for processing short
sales has been one of the biggest steps in the right direction that
I’ve seen from a large bank in the short sale industry. That doesn’t
mean there aren’t still a lot of problems with Bank of America short
sales, but it is a massive improvement from where they were a year
ago.
Short sales that would have previously taken 6-8
months to negotiate with Bank of America can usually be completed
within 60-90 days now when processed through the Equator system. It
can still be a painful experience at times, but it’s kind of like
pulling a bandage off your arm: It’s going to hurt whether you pull it
off slowly or quickly, but isn’t it better to get the pain over with
quicker?