Bank delays killing short sale real estate investments in the USA

The American banking system is slowly destroying the real estate market. After 6 months of delays, two deals I was supposed to sign on last week have been delayed once again because of the bank’s inability to agree to sign on the dotted line. This is insane. After 6 months of haggling, and an agreement in principal but not in writing, the bankers cannot get their fat arses off their comfy chair to sign the papers.

All the short sale investors I speak to are saying the same thing. The cash is waiting; the deal is ready to go; tenants (in a few cases, the original owners) are lined up; and the only thing holding up the sale is the bank. You would think they had enough foreclosure property sitting on their books – but apparently not.

Investing in foreclosure property is all well and good, but a lot of the stock has now been sitting around and needs a lot of work. A short sale makes far more sense if the owner has not destroyed the property. There are too many bank owned properties already, so what they are doing delaying short sales is beyond me. Are they seriously going to try and wait it our with all this property in the hope that the quantitative easing will inflate the values again?

And the worst offender by far is that behemoth Bank of America – the bank most responsible for the irrational lending that caused the crash – now here they are delaying the recovery.