Short Sales By The Numbers:
3,900
We have about 3,900 short sales currently for sale in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area on the MLS.
2,200
In the Twin Cities, of those 3,900 short sales we now have more than 2,200 that have received offers and are waiting for the seller’s lender(s) to provide a response, 900 more than we had nearly 20 months ago and 500 more than we had 7 months ago. By the way, this means that 2200+ buyers are tied up waiting for properties they may or may not ever get to buy.
56%
Percent of short sale properties for sale that are currently stuck in Lender Approval Limbo that can run anywhere from a month (rarely) to 3-6 months (typical) to nearly a year (rarely).
5
Number of months of short sale approval backlog when considering that over the last 12 months we’re only averaging 443 closed short sales each month.
Commentary
The number of total homes we have tied up waiting for lender approval is probably closer to 2,400 when taking into account other MLS statuses and short sales that are not properly identified in the MLS. 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 perfected. 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.
