The home owner NOT the Listing Realtor or Short Sale negotiator is the best resource for knowing if a home has an auction sale date. I urge all Realtors and negotiators to be very clear with their home owners in distress. Let them know that you will always ask the bank if a sale date has been set they are the last line of defense, not you. Notice of a sale dates are sent to the home owner by certified mail and if they are not living in the home they should give their lender a proper forwarding address or have someone who is checking their mail for these notices regularly.
When Realtors and negotiators ask these questions to the short sale negotiator with the bank, there is no way to rely on it or the information shared. Why? Simply because most banks run these departments separately and often their internal systems do a poor job of communicating.
If a home owner is missing payments they must expect that a foreclosure/auction sale will happen. Start them there and then work hard together as a team to avoid it. When a home owner thinks the Realtor and Short Sale Negotiator are the best resource they simply stop looking or paying attention at all to notices from their bank.
It is also important to make it very clear that if a home owner has missed payments that the foreclosure process will continue even after the short sale request has been acknowledged by the lender. The foreclosure process and the short sale process move through the bank concurrently and the short sale process does not stop the foreclosure process without intervention from the bank’s negotiator.
Neither the Realtor nor short sale negotiator are accountable if your bank chooses to complete the foreclosure process while attempting a short sale, barring negligence of course. Without the home owner’s due diligence managing the mail from the bank it is impossible for anyone to guarantee they will know an auction sale date has been set or after completed. Working together you can increase the likelihood of a successful short sale.
