Following is the experience of an unproffessional Buyer:

House #1 that we looked at was in the process of being foreclosed on, and it had been approved for a short sale.  We knew that it would take a little longer than an individually-owned home to get a response to an offer.  Well, we never did hear anything, and a week later we were told that ***IF*** they would respond to us at all, it would be a few more days even.  ***IF*** And then we found out that the bank has decided to not take less than $23,000 more than our offer, PERIOD.  Even if it takes them 2 years to sell the house, they said.

Our 3rd choice house (and actually it's our first choice, but we made an offer on it 3rd) is lender-owned totally.  It is currently in an on again/off again contract with someone with horrible credit.  His financing keeps falling through, and the owning bank gives him some other hoop to jump through in order to keep the deal going. The last time his financing fell through, the selling agent started taking back-up offers since he's not confident that this deal is actually going to make it to closing.  That is where OUR offer is, as a back-up to this other one that may or may not be under contract.

You'd think that the owner bank would be jumping at the chance to have a "sure thing" offer, right?  They haven't actually SEEN our offer, since they are still in a "sort of" contract with this other guy, but their agent has told them in no uncertain terms that they should let that one go (since his financing keeps falling through anyway) since he's got a great offer (ours) waiting.  But no.  For some reason they are still waffling on whether they want to continue the deal with this other guy.

There are 32,000 houses on the market in that city.  Of that 32,000, 13,000, over a third, are lender-owned.  And from what I have been told, this type of behavior is typical of the owning banks.  It is not unusual for a house listing to say things like, "Please allow up to 7 days for a response to an offer."  So say someone wants to buy a house, and they make an offer on one.  They would not hear ANYTHING for a full 7 days!

I have no idea why the banks aren't trying to unload these homes as soon as possible.  They are only costing the banks money.  So first the banks loaned money to people who couldn't afford the houses in the first place.  And now that the people couldn't make the payments, the banks foreclosed on them (of course).  But now that the banks own them, they won't let go of them easily.  People with money, with the means to buy a house, CAN'T.  There are tons of houses available.  But it's next to impossible to buy one!

So yup, I feel like we are moving to Pottersville.  The banks own all the homes, and apparently we have to GROVEL at their feet in order to even get them to look at our offers.

For more info on foreclosure and how to buy click here.