Bank owned home buying questions – Temecula Valley – California

I received a few great questions from buyers over the past few days and I would like to share two of them.

Question: Why did my agent tell me that my offer was accepted and then I found out it was not after I already scheduled a home inspection?

When you submit an offer on a bank owned home and you are told your offer is accepted and you don’t have a copy of the fully executed contract in your hand (that is a contract with your signatures and the banks)… you can still lose the home to another buyer—that is, once you have the banks signatures on the contract, counter offer and addendums the bank will stop looking at other offers. The banks are giving buyers anywhere from 5 to 10 days to remove inspection contingencies so I know it is tempting to schedule a home inspection, and to pay for the termite report, but hold off until you have a fully-executed contract. If you don’t wait you could be out a few hundred dollars or more.

Question: My offer was accepted why hasn’t the status changed from “Active” to “Pending” in the MLS?

Assuming this is a bank owned home ~ this question fits well with the first question. It all depends on the banks procedures and policies. For example, bank “C” (I don’t want to list the name of the bank for liability reasons) has recently been sending the counter offer to the buyers already signed by the asset manager approving the sale and once the buyers put their signature on the contract it is now fully-executed. In this situation they usually change the status quickly.

For the most part listing agents have to wait for the asset managers to give them permission to change status. Sometimes they wait till escrow has been opened, or until the “good faith deposit” has been received, or sometimes they even wait till all inspection contingencies have been removed by the buyer. It all depends on the bank and their policies. You can always ask your agent, once you are under contract, to ask the listing agent when they are going to change the status…