Bank of America trying to change its reputation in the short sales arena
I was fortunate enough this morning to sit in and listen on a webinar set up by Bank of America. It was their effort to explain how they would better handle short sales from here on out. The webinar was hosted by Matt Vernon, executive in charge of REO and Short Sales, for Bank of America with over 10,000 Realtors listening in who specialize in short sales. He was the man in charge.
It was interesting to hear that they are focusing on dramatically improving their short sale process because they want to re-establish their relationship with Realtors to strengthen their ties with us on their mortgage origination front . Apparently, there has been a lot of negative repercussion on their mortgage origination front during this important time, when buyers are trying to buy properties to take advantage of the Federal Tax Credit. He emphasized this point at the beginning of the presentation and again at the end of the presentation.
They have re-defined the customer in their view of the short sale process. It is no longer, solely the investor, but the new definition includes:
1. Distressed homeowner
2. Listing Agent
3. Buyer’s Agent
4. Investor
This was the order he placed the various interested parties. (Hmmm. I wonder if their participation in the HAFA Program had anything to do with this?)
Then he went into full detail explaining how they are utilizing Equator to process short sales and how successful it has been for them from in the past few months from their own measurements. I can attest to this fact.
This presentation today obviously was to address the negative image that Bank of America is suffering right now from Realtors who specialize in Short Sales. However, it was very refreshing for this huge organization to come out and pro-actively admit they have a problem and lay out what they are going to do to do as an institution to address the problem. But most importantly, in my opinion, learning that they are doing this because they are suffering on their loan origination side as a result of this bad publicity.
Call me old fashioned, but I always try to get to the root cause of why people or institutions change their behavior. In this case, apparently, it is because of the money they are losing on the origination front. This makes it real and insures Bank of America will follow through and live up to its announcement. After all, it is about them making more money.
