Until November of 2009 Bank of America / Countrywide short sales were difficult to navigate and a communication challenge to say the least. Our average time to receive an approval ranged from four to six months. As a result Bank of America created a partnership with equator.com thus reducing the short sale approval timeline from 6 months to 45 days.  For this reason and because there continues to be confusion with the process I decided to provide 3 steps to successfully initiate a B of A short sale and navigate through this new system.

One small task at a time

Step 1 . Listing agent must Register on equator.com  once your REALTOR has informed B or A that you are short selling your home. B of A will then assign the short sale to your REALTOR in the equator.com system. Your REALTOR will then upload a laundry list of documents one task at a time. Tasks are the basic process initiated by B of A to ask for the necessary documents needed to start the short sale. Your REALTOR will be asked to upload the following:

• Purchase contract
• MLS information
• Buyer Pre-qualification including social security numbers
• Picture of home
• Authorization from seller to allow REALTOR to talk to B of A

Step 2. Seller needs to notify B of A that they want to start a short sale. equator.com will provide a password to the seller and the seller must have an email address of their own to access the system.

Step 3. Seller must upload independent of each other (one task at a time) the following documents.

• 2 yrs tax returns
• 2 months bank statements
• Pay stubs for the last 30 days
• Hardship letter
• Financial statement

Challenges:

• There are still many people who don’t have an email address or are not comfortable uploading documents into the system.
• Sellers will get blocked out of the system if they have too many failed attempts at accessing with an incorrect password(it happens all the time).
• Sellers must respond as quickly as possible when given tasks. Failure to do so will slow the process down and may stall the process until requested documents are uploaded.

Goal:

Once B of A receives the information they will begin processing your short sale. 2010 is primarily expected to be a short sale year as banks begin to develop new processes to handle the paperwork involved.  Knowing what to expect and being prepared is key when navigating the B of A short sale system.