Buying a House in Cape Coral - Part II

      "APPROVED PRICE!! THE BANK IS READY TO CLOSE THE DEAL.HURRY!!! BRING YOUR BUYER, WE CAN CLOSE IN AUGUST. DON'T MISS OUT ON THIS FRESH WATER CANAL HOME AND POOL"
      That's what the listing said on the house we wanted to buy in Cape Coral, FL.  But that's not how it has happened.
      The home was listed as a short sale, which meant the lender had agreed to accept a price below what the sellers owed on the mortgage.  Lenders sometimes agree to short sales to avoid the costly process of taking the home to foreclosure, and often forgive the borrower the balance on the mortgage.

      We were very excited to find this home.
      It had everything we wanted:  recent construction, one story, pool, on a canal.  And our agent thought it would close within a couple weeks.  After all, the bank had already approved the price and we were paying cash.  An easy transaction.
     Nope.  We waited one week.  Our agent contacted the sellers agent.  It will happen any day, maybe today, she said.  Nope.
     We waited another week.  Same thing:  it's going to happen any second now. Nope.
     In the interim, I read up on short sales.  The worst bank, according to numerous Realtor bloggers, was Bank of America.  I emailed our agent.  Could our lender be Bank of America?  She checked. Of course it was.  Just our luck.
     A month passed and our agent got a note from the seller's agent.  The bank wanted the seller's agent to upload the paperwork into the computer again.  Now we were back to square one.
     This really hacked me off.  Was the sellers' agent a dummy?  Could she have entered the paperwork wrong the first time? Or could it be that Bank of America lost the paperwork  THAT ALREADY HAD BEEN ENTERED INTO THE COMPUTER?  How could that even happen?  Our Realtor informed us that, yes, this was a BofA modus operandi.
     Back on the internet, I ran across many sorry stories of Bank of America short sales.  I also ran across something I had not expected:  a Bank of America twitter account called BofA_help.  I thought I would try it. Amazingly enough, a member of the help staff phoned me the very next day.  She was able to pull up our account and see that the paperwork indeed was in the computer.  That's all she could tell me, but at least I had someone within BofA confirming its existence.  If the paperwork disappeared again, I would have evidence within the bank that they had screwed it up.
     I don't know if this helped things move along, but since then, the paperwork seems to be traveling through the system in a relatively speedy manner.  I'm even hopeful that we will get approval next week and close before the end of the month.
     We shall see.