“The mortgage without surprises” comes with plenty of surprises when homeowners find themselves having difficulties making payments.
Short sales are difficult enough, with having to navigate through guidelines with lenders, investors and MI companies. Long wait times for approvals already detract qualified buyers and frustrate sellers and agents. But when a lender is completely unwilling to work with their sellers on a short sale, it can be the most frustrating experience in the world.
Enter ING. One would think that the Amsterdam-based Internet banking sensation would also make smart business decisions when it comes to defaulted mortgages. Their slogan “The mortgage without surprises” doesn’t take into account the surprises homeowners will have once they start having difficulties with their mortgage payments. Our recent short sale transaction, however, shows that ING’s short sale department is not concerned at all with making money for their company, nor do they have an ounce of care for their customers.
We first submitted this short sale to ING in June 2011. We started working with one negotiator, and then the short sale was transferred to another negotiator, and that’s when the transaction went downhill. At first he countered our $525k offer (the highest offer we had) with $645k. We were able to procure a higher offer at $555k and submitted that to the negotiator as it was the highest offer we could get. After the offer was submitted, the negotiator determined that he needed the approval on the 2nd lien before moving forward. He had not mentioned this in the preceding three weeks, of course. A week later, the negotiator was again asking for the response to his counter offer for $645k – it was as if we had never sent in the other offer.
A month passed while we were waiting for the 2nd lien approval. We had to convince the 2nd lien to give us approval as they wanted the approval on the 1st lien before issuing their approval (a common short sale issue). At the end of July, the ING negotiator informed us they had just completed values and it came in at $588k. This was odd to us, since they had previously countered to $645k. The counter offer at $645k was before ING completing due diligence with values. We sent over the 2nd lien approval at the beginning of August, around the same time a foreclosure sale date was scheduled for 8-19-11. On 8-10-11 the negotiator asked for an offer at $588k.
We contacted the negotiator on 8-15-11 to inform him that a higher offer was impossible because the property value was simply not there. He stated we could obtain an interior appraisal for him. He made no mention of deadlines. We sent the appraisal for $516k on 8-16-11 – only a day later. The negotiator emailed on 8-17-11 that we were too late in sending the appraisal and they would foreclose on the home on 8-19-11. On 8-18-11 the negotiator informed us via phone that based on the appraisal our $555k offer was most generous. Then approximately an hour later he informed us he would not postpone the foreclosure sale date. No reason was given.
The home did not foreclose. ING requested postponement of the foreclosure sale date until 8-26-11. We immediately started trying to reach the negotiator as now there was no excuse for not having time to review the appraisal. When we would call representatives at ING, they told us that the negotiator would not take our calls nor would they escalate the matter to a supervisor. Upon researching ING online, we have found countless other realtors that have had this very same alarming issue with their negotiators.
On 8-23-11, we learned that ING requested another postponement of the foreclosure sale date and it was now set for 9-1-11. We thought this to be a good sign; why else would ING keep postponing the sale date? We made several more attempts to reach the negotiator and no response. On 8-25-11 we were able to make live contact with the negotiator’s supervisor.
The supervisor stated that they didn’t have enough time to review the appraisal, despite it being received on 8-16-11 and the new sale date being 9-1-11. In fact ING had made no attempts to even start reviewing the appraisal. He blamed the sellers for having previously sent in a Cease & Desist letter, stating that if they hadn’t done that ING would have closed the short sale six months earlier. He informed us that ING’s position on this short sale was that they would not do one at all. They wanted $588k on the short sale, despite the proof provided by a full interior/exterior appraisal that value was only $516k. He then made other excuses, stating that the 2nd lien wanted “a ridiculous amount” even though it was an amount we had no issues working with even if ING didn’t pay it in full. He also stated that he would have to cut our commission in half to make the short sale work. No explanations about these items, just broad statements to try to support ING’s decision to not help. Until this point, no mention of cutting commission had been made, nor had there been conversation on the amount the 2nd lien wanted. Finally the negotiator’s supervisor said that ING wanted a full reinstatement or pay off of the unpaid principal balance in full. Nothing else would save this home from foreclosure.
The home indeed went up on the auction block as ING said. Their opening bid was $590,749.64 and, exactly as we warned ING time and again, the home did not sell at such an outrageous price but reverted back to the beneficiary.
The inability of ING to communicate effectively is a detriment to any agent attempting to complete a short sale with them. The fact that they deliberately ignore and refuse to review values, after asking for them to be provided, is proof enough that ING has no intentions of playing nice when it comes to short sales. From our research, if an agent disagrees with ING at all they end up on their internal “blackball list” and ING will stop working with both agent and seller. This should cause agents pause before attempting to enter into negotiations with ING…or at least wait out the stormy weather for a little while longer. There is a loud buzz right now that Capital One purchased ING and will take over later this year.
Based on our experiences with ING, it is of little wonder why.
Contributor, designer & admin for JohnHart Gazette.
Hi Angie,
Nice read on IMG. Lot’s of our blog posts feature the unpleasant side of the short sale world. Don’t forget to inquire if you can do a BPO dispute when you get these crazy counter-offers based on “investor requirements”. It can be a lot of work to do that but once you’ve put together a reasoned value dispute along with photos almost always they will adjust downward–it’s usually your only viable option. Best, Dale