How to fall out of love?

Here's the most recent email that we have received from the listing agent representing the LYH:

At this time they just let us know that they will not review the package until she misses her November payment. Thanks. Sorry for the inconvenience.

You'd think that they would give us more information than that (i.e., what does this mean?! Are we wasting our time waiting for the bank to respond?). We put in an offer on Sept. 1st and this is the first real information we've gotten so far. I know that it's not the listing agent's fault that US Bank sucks balls when it comes to timeliness and communication, but you'd think that they could give us some sort of time line and answers to our questions. Since we haven't gotten any really good answers, I took to asking a public forum on The Nest what they made of this response. Unfortunately, most of the people who responded didn't have high hopes for us getting the LYH. Here are some of their comments help you have a better understanding of what this 1 1/2 sentence email might mean:

I'm sorry to say it doesn't sound promising. I'd get back to house hunting. The Nov. payment won't be due for almost 3 weeks (and that's if it's due on the 1st), and may not be deemed late/missed until 10-15 days after that. That's a month before they'll even review your offer. Unless you're exceedingly patient, and this is the only house around that might do, I'd move on. No reason to pull the offer in case it pans out, but I wouldn't hold my breath or expect anything.

It sounds to me like they might be giving the owner another month to try to get current (or at least make a payment). Nobody wins by having the house fall into foreclosure. The bank wants payments on the larger amount (owed on the house), not a house that they'd have to sell for less, so if the owner makes a payment, they'll probably back burner the SS idea for the time being.

i think you might just have to wait a while, and then it might not even go through. are you in the situation where you can just wait and wait? if so, be patient and keep your hopes up!

if you have to leave your current place soon, i would say move on....

wishful thinking though!

In this case, it sounds like it is not truly a short sale. Or at least one that was signed off on by the bank before they put the house on the market.

When we were looking, we heard several times that a house was a SS but when we pressed the agents (both our and the seller's) for more detail, turns out a sale for less than the amount owed had not yet been approved by the bank, so once we made our offer, we would have needed the bank to sign off on taking less than the amount owed then they would review our offer.

There were others that specifically said in the listing notes "bank approved short sale." We looked at several of those but they just weren't for us.

Personally, we decided that SS were too much hassle for us so we passed on them from that point on.

It sounds like they're not looking over it until November.

We put an offer on a SS in May. We finally heard this week that the mortgage was a FHA loan, so if the seller forecloses, the bank still gets the money from the mortgage insurance. Which is why they've been dragging it out. We walked away even though we love the house (after waiting 5 months!).

In this case, it sounds like the seller doesn't have the resources to sell for less than she owes, but she has been able to make her mortgage payments on time. In the eyes of a bank, a person who makes their payments isn't experiencing hardship, which is one of the main requirements for getting approval for a short sale. What the listing agent is really saying, is that the seller will have to intentionally miss her November payment in order for the bank to even look at her application. Even then, it could be months before anyone knows if a short sale has been approved.

If it were me, I would keep looking.

At this time, we have told D that we want to continue looking for houses again and keep our offer on the LYH until a.) we get a solid response from the bank, or b.) fall in love with another house. House-Hunting Mondays is starting up again this week, and hopefully D has been able to find some decent ones along with the ones that L and I want to go check out. I feel like we need to start putting the LYH out of our minds more and more and start allowing ourselves to fall in love with another house. It's going to be hard, but we're going to have to keep that in mind as we look at more houses this week and not continuously compare the house we're looking at to the LYH.

Wish us luck!