The Real Reason Home Sales Are Down...

We have been trying to buy a house for 3 months now. We've put offers on two different houses, the owners accepted those offers, but we still have no house!!

Okay, it just happens that every house we like is in a short-sale situation, which means the owners are selling it for less than what they owe and the bank that owns their mortgage has to approve the deal when someone makes an offer. The bank doesn't lose any money because whatever we don't give them, the current owners still have to pay back.

While we were waiting for bank approval, we withdrew our offer on the first house we liked because apparently the owners hate eachother and want to take it out on the house. In a month's time it went from being a really cute starter home to an expensive fixer-upper. So we're done with those people and their broken house. It was probably a blessing in disguise that the bank was taking so long. It gave us time to go back and take a second look at the house.

We found another really cute home in the same neighborhood, and the owners are so much better. We haven't met them but everytime we've seen their house it is so nice and clean and taken-care-of. It's really cute. I'm so excited about it!

So we sent them our offer and they accepted it, now we're just waiting. Waiting for a bank, who supposedly received billions of dollars to help deal with this sort of thing, to let us buy the house. Now this isn't a bank that we're trying to get a loan from. We're all taken care of on that end. This is a bank that owns the current mortgage on the house. They just have to sign a paper approving what we and the owners have already agreed on, and they are taking their sweet time!

We were told the house had two previous offers on it, both of which were more than what we offered, but the other buyers pulled them because of how long the bank was taking. If you are an institution that is in business to make money, what kind of sense does that make?

So let's straighten this out...Banks make bad loans and people can't afford their mortgages...Rather than letting their homes become forclosed, owners make a deal with their bank to let them short sell the property...Keep in mind, the bank loses none of it's money this way...The government gives these same banks billions of dollars to fix their "problem"...I want to buy the house...The bank won't give it to me...WTF?

So when you hear reports on the news about how low home sales are, it's not because nobody is buying houses, it is because banks won't give them up.

I smell a conspiracy...or maybe I've been hanging out with my dad too much. :)