Hardly a day goes by that we don't end up in a conversation with clients and perspective clients about Short Sales.

The only thing short about a Short Sale is the amount of money that the lender or lenders will receive from the sale of the property.  The rest of the Short Sale process should really be described as a LONG Sale.

In the beginning of a Short Sale, the seller must put together a short sale package which varies in makeup from lender to lender.  Once the package is submitted to the lender, the lender make take anywhere from two to four weeks for the initial review to make sure the package is complete and get the package entered into their processing system.

Once the review has been successfully completed the package waits to be assigned to a loss mitigation specialist at the bank.  This can take another two weeks.  Once the loss mitigation specialist has been assigned then they have another two weeks to review the package.

For those of you keeping score at home we are now around 8 weeks from the beginning of this process.

The loss mitigation specialist assigned to your file may be working on 800 to 1000 packages at one time so things usually do not move quickly.  The longest short sale they we have had took 9 months from start to finish.  Definitely a LONG sale.

I'll continue the saga of Short Sales in another post.