It appears that Chase Bank has a division that continuously checks the net for any posts or comments about them. So it shouldn’t take them long to find this one. It didn’t take them long at all to find the videos that my friends and short sale competitors, Kevin and Fred had at their site, Short Sale Power Hour.

Then the lawyers for the Chase Bully and Threats Division got involved. The videos in question had Kevin and Fred talking about their experiences and interactions as short sale agents dealing with Chase. The Chase Bully and Threats Division didn’t like the videos of Kevin and Fred talking about Chase Bank’s short sale division but there wasn’t anything Kevin and Fred were saying in the videos that Chase could claim was false or untrue or that would justify asking for them to be removed or modified. That didn’t matter.

During a very lengthy (6 hours, I am told) conversation, the lawyer from Chase told the lawyer from Keller Williams Realty International that if the videos in question, mentioning Chase, were not removed from Kevin and Fred’s Short Sale Power Hour site, Chase Bank would pull every REO listing from every single Keller Williams agent! There are 80,000 Keller Williams agents. Every REO listing that was a Chase listing from every single KW agent anywhere in the world.

Now that’s a damn nice threat!

I want one! I want Chase Bank to threaten me. Here is how they can get in touch with me so I can be threatened too.

In an effort to stop sellers facing foreclosure from gaming their system, Wachovia has completely stopped allowing any postponement of a foreclosure or Trustee’s Sale.  I have long felt that Wachovia was not simply a good lender to deal with for a short sale – truth be told – they were the very best.

I’m being told that this new policy isn’t going to be a "bad" thing.  I don’t see it that way.  To penalize everyone because of  the bad actions of a few is seldom good (even if common).

Here is a copy of a response from Wachovia that was sent to me via the title company:

**IF THERE IS A FORCLOSURE SALE DATE SET – WE WILL NO LONGER POSTPONE THAT DATE FOR ANY REASON – if there is an active foreclosure Sale Date we MUST RECEIVE funds no later than 5 DAYS before that Sale Date, also if there is a SALE DATE set we must receive the full package 10 business DAYS prior to that sale date (and again, we will not postpone that date)**

FOR EXAMPLE:

If you are SUBMITTING A SHORT SALE PACKAGE on a property that has a SALE DATE SET FOR AUGUST 30th, the SHORT SALE APPROVAL WILL BE ISSUED with an expiration date of AUGUST 25th and we will NOT EXTEND the Short Sale approval or SALE DATE.

Sandra Villalpando
Short Sales Manager
Wachovia, REO

I’m hoping that this new policy from Wachovia is reversed.  I do understand that some lenders say they will postpone one and then go right ahead and foreclose anyway.  I’ve just always expected much better from Wachovia.  And rightly so!

A lot of blog posts have been written about what the National Association of Realtors is doing wrong or what they "ought to be doing" with regard to this or that.  I have written some of those posts myself.  I think it is important if one is going to find and point out things that are wrong that they also see and point out things that are right.

I believe that all members of the NAR have a debt of gratitude to the NAR.  Not just for the MLS either!  This includes all the various people who do nothing but find fault with whatever the NAR is doing – they do too.  I don’t know if what we have was by design or if there was a really really bright man or woman on some committee back in the day who realized the future impact of what they were doing or it was just a series of lucky breaks.  Either way, they did good.

Anyone who understands marketing (and there are NO exceptions to this rule) understands that you can be thought of by a public (whichever particular public you are marketing to – as there isn’t "a public" or "the public") just one way.  The result or "product" of marketing is owning shelf space in the mind of that person.  And you get to occupy precisely ONE slot.  They will think of you one way.  How they think of you may have nothing to do with how you would like them to think of you or it may be exactly how you want them to think of you – that all depends on the effectiveness of your marketing – which depended totally on who you were marketing to and how carefully you crafted the single way that public should think of you.

If not for the word "REALTOR" – which became our NAME, thanks to the individuals on some NAR committee a long time back, we would most likely be referred to by the home buying pubic as "Used House Salesman".  I like the title, Realtor a lot better.  I’m thinking you do too.  I’ve mentioned this to a few Realtor friends in person and thought it was about time I mentioned it to my friends here.

Thank you, NAR!!  Nice job.

Here is a link from an email I just received.  The people writing at this website http://narscandal.com/ may or may not have something worthwhile to say.  But there is pretty much nothing they will ever say that will get any applause from me.  Why?  Because they go WAY out of their way to hide who they are.  Maybe it isn’t a "they" but only a "he" or a "she" – pretending to be a group of "concerned people".

This isn’t a defense of NAR.  It is saying loud and clear – don’t take potshots or engage in name calling if you want to keep yours hidden.  Otherwise, you are just a covertly hostile weasel who can’t be trusted to tell the truth.

Nowhere on the site does it say who is writing any of it or who supports them.  I have nothing but contempt for the sort of passive-aggressive person who puts up a site like this.  You want to say something and be respected?  Simple: don’t hide who you are or who you work for.

One of the more remarkable methods used (even by "Intelligence Agencies") to establish if something is true or not is to is to label it true if it came from a "reliable source".  Who said it?  If he or she is considered reliable or an authority the data is considered true or factual.  The other – perhaps even more silly – system in use is multiple report.  If a report is is heard from several areas or people it is "true".   Five or ten people hear the same thing and pass it along, it becomes a "fact".

I have been hearing about the Shadow Inventory for well over a year now.  It is HUGE.  It is sensational.  A Big Giant Tsunami (BGT) of inventory is going to be unleashed by the lenders.  Get ready.  Like nothing you have ever seen.  The housing market will be flooded with inventory like never before.  No doubt it will change life as we now know it.

Only it is complete crap.  Nothing but invented data dreamed up and endlessly passed along by organizations and individuals who heard it from someone else (I have not yet tracked the original source for this shadow inventory nonsense as it seems to emanate from "everywhere").  What is really interesting are all the "new facts" dreamed up by "industry observers" to make the Big Giant Tsunami theory still possible – in spite of the overwhelming abundance of easily observable data that would directly contradict the idea of the banks having this huge inventory that they are holding back to be released later.

I bet I have your attention now.  Some of you may even be angry – you damn well KNOW there is a shadow inventory!!!  So lets look over why I am publicly saying it isn’t true and what the thought process was for the people and organizations who have been saying (and continue to assert) it is true.  These people would have no reason to intentionally forward false data.  So what data did they look at to conclude there was a Big Giant Tsunami of inventory the banks have and aren’t releasing?  Charts like this – graphically showing the Shadow Inventory are all over the the media and the internet.

So what system is being used by economists and others to calculate this shadow inventory?  Simple, take the cumulative total foreclosures recorded (the big number) and subtract the current active and pending inventory in the MLS, plus the sold MLS properties (the little number) and the remaining number is "the shadow inventory".  Simple, quick and it requires NO LOOKING at anything – just grade school level math.

To be clear, I am NOT referring at all to any foreclosures yet to come.  Inventory the banks may wind up getting in the future.  I am only talking about NOW.  It is no secret that REO agents are losing market share as they, as a group, have less and less inventory being given to them by their asset managers.  These same asset mangers who – last year – kept telling them that they had a lot more coming in to give them.  It just never arrived for them to give.  The only REO agents I know who are doing better these days are those REO agents who deal in higher end homes.  Those high end agents are getting inventory, lots of it.  This is not to say that all across the country there is no REO inventory, there is – just less and less of it.  The BGT crowd has invented the idea that the banks have the inventory but are keeping it until the prices go up!

How about a few facts that I know are true here in the Phoenix area – and I have every reason to believe are true right across the country (as I can think of NO reason for these facts to only be true here).

Fact: In my local MLS, there are about THREE TIMES as many bank owned homes listed in the MLS as the MLS actually shows.  I know this because two guys who actually look counted them all.  One by one.(Mike Orr of The Cromford Report and Tom Ruff of The Information Market)  They counted them and compared the addresses shown in the MLS, one by one, with the County Assessor records.  These are homes listed by banks who instructed the listing agent to NOT use the term "bank owned" in the listing.

Tom Ruff and Mike Orr spent months going over every deed transfer in Maricopa County (Looking at each foreclosure going to the bank and tracking that house for its current ownership and they could directly account for all but about 5,000 houses) and established that for the Greater Phoenix Area THERE IS NO SHADOW INVENTORY. 

Fact: Major banks often off load huge portfolios of inventory to hedge funds.  Huge portfolios.  Anyone or any organization who is claiming that they are "tracking" what the banks are doing who does not have sufficient access to track those portfolio sales is simply engaging in the simple grade school math referenced five paragraphs above.

No doubt there will be some readers who remain convinced that what they have read about and then co-created must be true.  That’s okay.  If you are happy believing that a Big Giant Tsunami is coming – enjoy the wait.  However, I’m betting you remain completely dry.