On Monday I went to lunch with my business partner who works on 5-10 short sales at a time and he told me that of the 7 phone numbers he has for Loss Mitigation Specialists at Countrywide (now part of Bank of America) all have voicemail messages that say they are out of the office until the New Year.

Calls to their customer service department are being answered but when the decisionmakers are out of the office for nearly 2 weeks it is more like “the lights are on but nobody’s home.”

While we all need vacation time to spend with our friends and loved ones, there are many buyers and sellers out there waiting for responses on short sale offers that have waited weeks or months for a reply and apparently will need to wait weeks more.  Given that short sales recoup significantly more of the original equity than a foreclosure, you would think that Countrywide would have someone working on these files.