Recently I celebrated a huge victory in my real estate business when the short sale that I been working on for two years and eight months finally closed. One part of me wants to celebrate YEAH! but the other part of me, the business person in me, thinks it was a bad business decision. When you break it down, what was my hourly wage on this transaction (not even counting all of the miles I drove back and forth to the home over the 2.7 years)? So as an agent, should I have told the seller “Sorry I can’t help you anymore!”?
Guess what… this applies to loan officers too! My husband Tim is an MLO and he is currently working on a deal for months that is a nasty divorce situation (he’s even been called into court to explain the situation to the judge) and right in the middle of it the client made a late payment… BOOM, credit score dropped, now what? Do you keep working on it with the attitude of “I’ve got this much time into it and we’re almost there” or do you decide it’s time to cut loose and work on something more productive?
And what about your borrowers that are waiting on a short sale? You have to keep writing new approval letters because the servicer needs them updated… you wait and wait and hope the borrower’s situation doesn’t change by the time the short sale gets approved.
If you look at it solely from a business point of view, you should maximize your profit while minimizing work. I lost money on that deal. I lost mileage driving out to the house which was about 45 minutes away. I took time that I could’ve been working on something else, and if you do the math I probably could’ve gone to work at Taco Bell and made more money. But it’s not just about the money. It’s about a promise I made to my client that I would help him, and it’s about my integrity.
I think it’s ridiculous. No real estate or mortgage professional should ever be put into this position. You can’t constantly ask yourself “should I give up” or am I days away from an approval?
I don’t know the answer for you and I don’t even know the answer for me. As I’m writing this I have one of my listings going to auction today and yet I’m still working on it. I’m still working for my client because that’s what I promised to do. Today’s ramblings weren’t intended to give you the answer; I don’t know the answer. The purpose of this article is to make you stop and think if you should turn away some business right at the beginning. I’ve been teaching short sales for over 10 years now and honestly I would think the banks would have the process going much smoother by now. (by the way, our final closing was $10,000 LOWER than the offer that we originally submitted 2.7 years earlier).
“We are made to persist. That’s how we find out who we are.”
Tobias Wolff, ‘In Pharaoh’s Army’