Short Sales By The Numbers:
5,000
We have just under 5000 short sales currently for sale in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.
1,700
In the Twin Cities, we now have more than 1,700 short sales 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 ever get to buy.
35%
Percent of short sale properties for sale that are currently stuck in Lender Approval Limbo that can run anywhere from a few weeks (rarely) to many months (typical).
5.4
Number of months of short sale approval backlog when considering that over the last 12 months we’re only averaging 322 closed short sales each month.
Commentary
The number of total homes we have tied up waiting for lender approval is probably very close to 2000 when taking into account other MLS statuses and minutia too complex to discuss here. We are years into this housing downturn and while banks seem to have figured out foreclosure sales and can process those pretty smoothly, they are nowhere close to having short sales down. Considering a large percent of the failed short sales end up as foreclosures, quickly and properly addressing short sales could literally cut 12+ months off of our foreclosure activity.
Banks: get your stuff together and help us (agents/buyers/short sellers) help you.