One of the most frustrating things about trying to close a short sale is that there are so many different parties involved. As a real estate specialist, you have to interact with:

· The homeowner (who is likely dealing with their first short sale and needs a lot of help along the way)

· The bank servicing the loan (an entity that may be dealing with thousands of short sales and that isn’t particularly interested in your particular transaction)

· Any secondary lien holders (who are likely to squawk about not receiving a big enough slice of the pie)

· The broker valuing the home (who is probably most interested in getting their job done as fast as possible so they can collect their fee and move on to the next house)

· The buyers interested in purchasing the property (who probably want to close sooner rather than later – especially if they are selling their own home to move into this one)

· The mortgage owner (who is operating at one level removed from the whole deal but still gets a big say in what offers are accepted)

It’s not surprising that there are things that get lost in translation (or literally just lost). Homeowners trying to get their house sold before being foreclosed on and short sales specialist who are trying to assist them can be stuck in limbo when things go wrong.

Fannie Mae to the Rescue

The mortgage giant recognizes that short sales are complicated. So, they’ve created a new online tool for real estate specialist to escalate requests for assistance. Here, you can fill out a quick form to notify Fannie Mae that someone has dropped the ball. This is the place to go when you dispute an assigned value for a property or if you have a question related to Fannie Mae policies.

You might also use this tool to let the organization know that you haven’t heard back from the servicer about an offer or that you’ve been waiting more than 30 days for a valuation. It’s a good way to hold the mortgage servicer accountable. They may not care about what a real estate specialist wants, but they’ll listen to Aunt Fannie. Apparently, this new escalation tool (which launched in February) has already helped push through 10,000 short sales!