OK, It’s a Wrap: the 1400 Day Short Sale is CLOSED

Last year I blogged about the 1,096 day short sale I had in Putnam County getting a “final approval.” The thought entered my mind that blogging about such a snake-bitten file prior to closing might jinx it, but with a final approval and a solid buyer I thought “what could go wrong?”

Plenty. 

I won’t bore you with the details, but when we failed to close by the deadline the lender rather callously re-set the timer and made us start from scratch. They ordered a new Broker Price Opinion (BPO) and that came in $100,000 higher. The buyer’s mortgage commitment expired. We were back at square one. It was heartbreaking yet almost humorous if you could somehow divorce yourself from the fact that my clients financial life, let alone my living, hung in the balance. 

10 months later, we finally closed. The buyer came up in price $50,000 to make the deal work, and coordinating approvals from the second lender and first, coupled with the buyer’s new mortgage, took us from this past December to today. My youngest son, who was born a week after the place was originally listed in 2007, turns 4 tomorrow. It will be the first day of his life when I am not working on getting this home sold. 

My typical short sale is incredibly faster than this- as a matter of fact, my friend and CDPE (certified distressed property expert) instructor, Mark Boyland, joked with me last week that he’d like to help me get approvals in under 1000 days. Well, we can smile about it now. 

There isn’t much more to say, except that we’re relieved and glad it is over with a happy outcome. The buyer hung in for 18 months. The sellers had their hearts broken so many times we lost count. And yet there we all were at the closing table together, as if we were graduating from a 4-year education together.

4 years and 4 days. The only thing missing was pomp and circumstance.