Your First Call
We have a volunteer in our office, a woman that wants to learn the ins and outs of the short sale process (clearly a glutton for punishment). So, just last week, we gave her a file where the short sale package was recently submitted to the bank, and asked her to call to confirm receipt of the short sale package.
That’s the first call for lenders that do not use the Equator system. (Actually that’s the second call.) The real first call would be to obtain information for how to submit the third-party authorization and the short sale package. (Tip: The third-party authorization at certain lenders goes to a completely different fax number then the short sale package.)
So, after you have sent your short sale package on its merry way (don’t forget to save and document confirmation that you fax went through), you need to wait a day or two (or three) and call the short sale lender to verify that your short sale package has been received.
Information You Need for Your Call
When you dial up the lender (you can obtain the phone number off of the seller’s mortgage statement if you do not have it already), the bank employee/customer service representative is going to ask you for most (or all) the following information:
- Seller’s Name
- Seller’s Loan Number
- Property Address
- Seller’s Mailing Address if Different from Property Address
- Seller’s Phone
- Last for digits of Seller’s Social Security Number
- Your Name and Your Company
Note that if your third party authorization is not in the system yet, the call will be over fast. Lenders will generally not move forward with the call unless they can confirm that you have the written permission of the borrower to speak to the lender on the borrower’s behalf.
So, our volunteer called the lender to confirm that the short sale package had been received. Then, when the customer service representative answered the phone and started asking questions, she had all the answers.
In order to have all the answers to the lender questions, it’s important to keep good records. You could keep a hard file with a single page that has all the answers to those bank questions in chart form. You can also include the information on the top portion of your communication log (remember to log each and every call and fax).
For the tech-savvy, you can use Outlook, Excel, Evernote or many of the other available programs in order to keep a good online record of all your calls and conversations with the short sale lender. Just like the Boy Scouts, whatever you do, remember that it is important to be prepared.
