The real solution to a shorter short sale timeline is to hire more negotiators and support staff. With most of our short sales, the majority of the time is spent waiting for a response from the short sale negotiator, short sale processor or mortgage holder. We are very skeptical this will yield any significant improvement.

BofA Makes Changes to Trim Short Sale Timeline

04/09/2012 By: Carrie Bay , DSNews.com

Bank of America is making changes to its short sale procedures and introducing an improved task flow within the short sale technology module from Equator, BofA’s short sale management platform of choice. The goal: to reduce the timeframe for a short sale decision to less than three weeks.

Starting Saturday, April 14, real estate professionals working with BofA will be required to submit five documents for short sales initiated with an offer:

• Purchase Contract including Buyer’s Acknowledgment and Disclosure
• HUD-1
• IRS Form 4506-T
• Bank of America Short Sale Addendum, which includes the Agent Certification form
• Bank of America Third-Party Authorization Form

The acknowledgement and disclosure form, short sale addendum, and the form for third-party authorization are available through the company’s online Agent Resource Center.

The third-party authorization form is a new standardized document developed specifically for BofA. Previously, the lender accepted third-party authorization forms in differing formats and from a variety of sources when transacting a short sale.

Bank of America says it recognized a need for greater compliance and consistency with this important document and has now created its own form to standardize the third-party authorization process. The two-page document

requires signed acknowledgments from all borrowers and designated representatives in a short sale. Beginning April 14, BofA will accept only the official Bank of America Third-Party Authorization Form for short sales.

The bank’s new short sale process will enable real estate agents, brokers, attorneys, and other short sale specialists involved in pre-foreclosure transactions to complete tasks such as document collection, valuations, and underwriting simultaneously.

With these steps running concurrently, the timeline from initiation to closing is reduced. In fact, Bank of America says it will now be able to provide a decision on a short sale offer in 20 days. Typically, BofA’s short sale process has taken anywhere from 45 days upwards.

In continuing to streamline the decision process, should the buyer walk away from the sale, Bank of America is giving agents five days to submit a backup offer. Previously, the backup offer window was 14 days. Interested buyers are limited to two counteroffers and will receive a response from the lender within three days.

BofA notes that all email messaging between designated selling agents and their Bank of America short sale specialist will continue to occur within the Equator system. Agents will receive a standard notice via email to log into the system and retrieve their messages.

In order to implement the myriad of changes, BofA’s Equator platform will be down for 10-12 hours the night of Friday, April 13 into the early morning of Saturday, April 14.

Real estate agents and other short sale professionals are invited to review a Bank of America webinar outlining the coming changes. BofA is also offering task-by-task training on the new Equator process via a webinar to be aired on Thursday, April 19 from 4-5 p.m. (EST). Additional information can be found through the company’s online Agent Resource Center.

Bank of America’s short sale and REO executive Bob Hora says the company expects short sales to continue to increase and is taking steps to ensure it is providing decisions quickly and real estate agents are alerted of status as soon as possible.