Based on my personal analysis of our local MLS database, approximately 1300 Twin Cities sellers and at least as many buyers may be waiting for their offer on a short sale property to be reviewed and accepted/rejected/countered by the seller’s lender(s). The number of buyers waiting for answers may be substantially higher than the number of sellers because many short sale listings have multiple offers on them. Based on current sales activity, these 1300 in-limbo properties are equivalent to two weeks of pending sales.
Twin Cities Short Sales: By the Numbers
MLS-Listed For Sale Short Sale Homes:
4388 homes
Available for showing, but under contract and subject to 3rd party approval/other:
1046 properties, $174,000,000+ in MLS list prices
Temporarily Not Available for Showing (most under contract waiting for lender approval):
406 properties, $73,000,000+ in MLS list prices
If we round these numbers down to be conservative, we’re talking about 1300 sales worth $200+ MILLION worth of short sale properties waiting for banks to review offers.
Thinking Bigger:
(and in very round numbers)
- Approximately 3.5 million people live in the greater Twin Cities region, which is about 1.1% of the total U.S. population.
- The Twin Cities runs pretty average for the country in many respects, including mortgage delinquencies – likely a good indicator of short sales activity – so let’s just call us “average” for this exercise.
- Take 1300 sales worth $200M in limbo here and extend it to the rest of the country gets you:
- $18 BILLION in real estate short sales could be awaiting lender review
- 117,000 home sales could be in limbo due to the short sale review process
Of course this is all a big supposition but I believe these to be reasonable numbers. What do you think?
[...] that have received offers and are waiting for the seller’s lender(s) to provide a response, 100′s more than we had a year ago. By the way, this means that 1700+ buyers are tied up waiting for properties they may or may not [...]