Buying a House in Cape Coral - Part III

   Pity the poor sellers.
   It's now 49 days past the date we signed an offer to buy a home in Cape Coral, FL, and per our contract, we can now walk and find another house.
   If you have been following this saga, you know that we put in an offer to buy a short sale home in this sprawling suburban city just north of Fort Myers.  The epicenter of the housing crisis, Cape Coral seemed the perfect place to get a great deal on a vacation home.  And we did.  The homeowners signed the contract a couple days later.  But it was a short sale and now it was up to the bank to approve the deal.
   A homeowner who is behind on his or her mortgage sometimes can get the lender to agree to having the house sold as a "short sale" for less than the amount left on the mortgage.  The lender must approve the sale at the discounted price and often forgives the balance on the mortgage.  Lenders do this to avoid taking the home through the costly foreclosure process.
   But woe to those sellers who face Bank of America.  Despite a "new and improved" short sale process, the bank still takes a pitifully long time in approving these sales.
   In our case, the sellers have been trying to ditch their home for more than two years.   I don't know this couple's back story. I know they have a child or two per the stickers on the wall in one of the bedrooms. Maybe one or the other lost a job. Maybe they were suckered into a complicated mortgage product they didn't understand and couldn't really afford. In any case, they moved out after putting the home on the market and have been dutifully paying their property taxes ever since.
   They got an offer not long after they listed the home.  The buyer waited a month, then two, then many, many more and still no word from Bank of America.  He finally gave up and found another house. The sellers put the home back on the market.  I don't know what happened that time but it got past the home inspection and once again, no sale and the buyer walked.
   There are many reasons a short sale can fall through.  It's possible the second buyer couldn't get a mortgage approved.  It could be the bank would not approve the buyer's offer.  Sellers set the price on a short sale.  So buyers have no idea what the bank might accept. This likely happened here, as the price went up by $6,000 after this deal went south, and the house was back on the market with a screaming headline of a bank-approved price.
  You would think this would make the next attempt at a sale a breeze.  This has not been the case. We not only agreed to buy the house at the bank-approved price, but we offered cash. No mortgage to worry about. No extra paperwork. We put two contingencies in our contract: an acceptable home inspection and a 45 day deadline for the lender to approve the offer. After that, we would be free to walk away and find another home. Our agent was confident the sale would be approved within a month.
   But she did not know then that Bank of America was the god of the sale. If you read real estate blogs, you soon learn that this bank is just about the worst of the lot for failing to consumate short sales.
  So we continue to wait and watch for new homes coming on the market.  And the sellers live in fear that another prospective buyer will fly the coop all because Bank of America can't get its act together.