average amount of time it takes to buy a short sale in atlanta these days? (Fargo: tax lien)

[winetime]

How long does it take to buy a short sale in Atlanta? What is the process?

[brooklynbarker]

Oh boy, I'm sure you will get a variety of answers, but I just closed on a house that I bought as a short sale. So, here's my 2 cents. The home had been listed for a while in the GMLS but not the FMLS system. My husband saw a sign in the front yard, but we couldn't find the listing anywhere. Our agent even had a hard time find it. And finally when he did, he learned that the listing had been expired for about 2 weeks or so. He contacted the agent and she stated that it was a short sale and was still for sale. I put in an offer in April for lower than the asking price. I didn't hear anything for 2 weeks (I believe this was the listing agent's fault-she was LAZY). I then put in a higher offer (the house was an amazing deal as is). My agent told me that the listing agent had to enter the offer into a special system that handled short sales. This house was a short sale through Wells Fargo. My offer was officially accepted in the middle of May. I closed on the property last week. Besides the short sale, there were a lot of other obstacles in the way of purchasing this home.

-Lazy sellers agent (she refused phone calls from my agent and would only talk to me), she would say she was working on something and we would catch her in bold face lies. She had a seperate business that she spent all her time and effort.
-One person was on the mortgage, 2 other different people were on the title
-Power of Attorney's had to be gotten for the 2 on the title
-There were 2 pages of liens against the property, including IRS and State tax liens
-One of the people on the title filed for bankruptcy during the short sale process (this had to be dismissed before the sale could continue)

All in all, I really believe that if the sellers agent would have been more cooperative we would have closed during the summer.

Hope this helps.

[winetime]

brookynbarker,
Congrads on your short sale, sounds like a really long time for you. It really makes me careful about who will we hire as an agent when we are ready to buy. Thanks for your input.

[ehoez]

120+ days

[318ntx]

It all depends on the type of mortgage as a mortgage professional myself I am seeing the bank traditional programs ( in house) take a an average 120 days or less. The HAFA program which is the government program takes close to 180 days on average.

[winetime]

No mortgage, paying cash, how long would it take then?