Short Sale, Part 4: Shortsaleistan
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Sandra Tsing Loh counts down to the early closing of her short sale.
So I’m down to my last 10 days of a surprisingly smooth short sale. People say short sale escrows are hellacious, but my loan was approved back in June. The appraisal was spot on, the inspection, perfect.
I am accumulating, on the lawn of my tiny rental unit, a cornucopia of flea market furniture to fill this lovingly restored, 1907, 2,400-square-foot house with. Including those 10 wooden chairs from Coco’s Family Restaurant I described last week, $7 apiece!
When I get word that IndyMac would suddenly like us to close escrow a day early. Just one day... early. For me the closing date was always a bit of a mystery anyway. They had originally set the closing date for Oct. 18, a Sunday. Which had me under the impression that we were actually closing closing on the next legal day. Oct. 19, Monday. But now IndyMac is saying we need to be closing closing closing closing, with every T crossed and every I dotted, on Oct. 16, Friday.
No extensions – or else? Come Monday, 10 days from now, onto the auction block my house will go! That faint squeaky sound in the background? That’s them polishing the gavels.
I expect my brassy realtor gal Millie to laugh – 20 YEARS in the business, she’s take-no-prisoners – I expect her to say: "Of course the bank can’t suddenly decide to close a day early, or they will auction off your house! It’s illegal! It’s witchcraft! This is America!"
But, before my eyes, I see Millie wobble and, while not losing it totally, she now confesses to me that short sales can be quote-unquote "hairy". Towards the end, they can be quote-unquote "like a fire drill." Which is why, as she says, you really have to have your quote-unquote "ducks in a row".
Just as I’m wondering why our real estate transaction has shifted from the mechanical language of points, and interest, and loan docs into folksy slang, if not even into the magical cant of the Bayou Delta – Millie now admits, 10 days before closing, that she has been consulting weekly, sometimes daily, and now even hourly, with an unnamed man she refers obliquely to as her firm’s "short sale specialist."
And when I call her with questions as to what day we need to be closing – for instance, if Friday is the real closing, does Monday count as double-closing and then does Thursday needs to be pre-closing? Millie will say, with forced cheer, "Well, I just got off the phone with our short sale specialist, and he sounded upbeat."
"And what did the tea leaves say?" I half want to cry out.
And all she says is: "Fingers crossed. Just keep those ducks in a row." What ducks? What row? You mean my Coco’s Family Restaurant chairs?
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