Thursday, July 7, 2011

Which Banks Are Pursuing the Most Short Sales?

Interesting article in Realtor Magazine (citing Inman, citing the Treasury) about which banks do more short sales. According to their findings, Chase and Wells Fargo. Couple of points on this:

  1. When we say Chase and Wells Fargo, we also include their acquisitions of troubled banks like WaMu and Wachovia. WaMu committed much fraud and encouraged risky lending - is there any wonder their loans are turning out to be short sales? A HUGE chunk of Wachovia loans was written off when it was acquired (which coincidentally makes them some of the easiest short sales to work). So, of course these lenders are doing a lot of short sales. But what about BofA's acquisition of Countrywide? See #2.
  2. Once again, we have to remember that real estate is a geographical phenomenon, and generalizing can lead to false conclusions. Countrywide was very active in Arizona, so our personal experience is that most of the short sales we are doing are BofA short sales. To put it simply - to say that all banks work all markets equally is a fallacy. For example, we rarely see US Bank short sales, but they are quite prevalent in Pacific Northwest, due to the fact that USB has a larger presence in that market. 

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