20 days remain until a public short sale of my house changes the title out of my name and into Bank of America’s… which is Bank of America.  I know, what a dumb name for an owner.  I like mine better but at this point there’s nothing I can do to alter the course of my house’s future other than winning the lottery.  The remaining 20 days would feel like an eternity if it weren’t for the upcoming holiday that will allow me to take a break from this nonsense and spend a few days with family.  Upon my return to Los Angeles there will be about one week left to prepare myself for the last gasp of ownership.  Seven or eight days is simply not enough time to encase the house in 3” solid steel.  Darn, I was looking forward to the look on the face of the lender and/or sheriff when they show up to discover the impenetrable metal fortress.  Then again if they can’t get in, I can’t get out.  And I want to get out… as gently as possible.  Several weeks ago it seemed a short sale was just the way to accomplish this.  Elizabeth Weintraub, an expert on short sales I interviewed a few weeks ago defined a short sale as, “selling your property for less than you owe.”  After an hour-long discussion with her on the subject it became obvious I was sorely mistaken about a short sale being a “gentle” solution to my foreclosure problem.  If you care to know the reasons why and develop a better understanding of short sales you can go here and read about it.  Why anyone would want to do that is beyond me.  I’m in foreclosure and already know far more about the subject than I should or want to.  Then again, with another voluminous round of ARMs resetting in the coming months the foreclosure crisis will be back on the news media radar… again.  It might be a good idea to brush up on the subject and add something to the discussions around the water cooler that promise to last about as long as it takes protons to smash into one another in CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (AKA a few minutes). 

In case you hadn’t heard, colliding of small particles that was once the feather in American physicists’ caps, was outsourced to the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) underneath the Swiss-French border.  Thank goodness because like many an uninformed, concerned citizen I was worried about that whole black hole thing.  I’ve been creating my own for months and do not want competition.  Whenever someone asks what I’ve been up to, “foreclosure” as my one-word response creates the biggest black hole in a conversation the world has ever seen.  As I’ve said before, I’m a bit socially inept and foreclosure is one of the reasons why.  I hoped a conversation with a short sale expert might put some order to my disorder.  Besides, I love taking things apart just to see how they work and found myself in both heaven and hell during my socially inept and awkward interview with Elizabeth Weintraub on the subject of short sales.  On the one hand, examining the ins and outs of the short sale process was better than being a kid in a candy store - it was like getting a grand tour of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory absent the pesky Oompa-Loompas.  Don’t get me wrong, I like Oompa-Loompas, I just don’t like sitting through their song and dance numbers to get to the candy.   On the other hand discovering the difficulties surrounding a short sale was hell in a bottomless handbasket. 

According to Elizabeth Weintraub the process can be such a financial and legal quagmire she recommends sellers pursuing short sales engage the services of a real estate lawyer and a CPA.  This, of course, is in addition to requiring an astute real estate agent to negotiate with the lender.  After you pay lawyer and accountant fees the lender will politely ask for the remaining money in your bank account to help offset the deficit on their balance sheets that was created by selling the house for less than what is owed on the loan.  If you don’t cough it up they won’t cough up an approval for a short sale.  Once everything is approved and the house is off your broke and beleagured back you will be left with with a blight on your credit report equivalent to that of a foreclosure.  This process of draining your bank account and sucking the life out of your credit score also takes months to accomplish.  I think I’ll pass on this one.  There are too many other things waiting to suck the life out of my life like filling in the microscopic cracks in the grout lines of the tile around the house or electrocuting myself trying to rewire the porch light that stopped functioning months ago or climbing into the attic naked to roll around in the fiberglass insulation as I attempt to get the attic fan blades unstuck.  While somewhat aggravating these inane tasks at least produce a sense of accomplishment.  But a short sale seems a one-way ticket to aggravating aggravation. 

Just when I began to think a short sale was nothing but the same old doom and gloom of other foreclosure alternatives Elizabeth pointed out a little known fact to me.  Bank of America has set up Home Retention Call Centers in India for frazzled homeowners in trouble with their mortgage payments.  She spoke to them on a number of occasions and so did this blogging loan mod lawyer.  A quick scan of the copious notes from my calls to Bank of America over the last several months reveals scribbles in the margins like, “language barrier”, “can’t find my loan in the system – WTF?!”, “unable to understand my questions re: loan mod process - who are these people?”, etc.  Wow… It looks as though I am the beneficiary of international intrigue.  It’s kind of exciting.  I haven’t traveled abroad in a few years and probably won’t for a few more so the prospect of calling abroad could satisfy my globetrotting itch sans the trots.  Then again, do I really want to go in circles with a representative who can barely feed their family on the twelve cents an hour they’re being paid by B of A?  I’m ashamed to admit I kind of do.  I’ve been dying for a good Saag Paneer recipe and this could be just the way to get one.  And when I’m through cooking my Feast From the East I’ll coat my front door with the leftover slippery, dark-green-poo-looking substance to keep the forthcoming foreclosure notice from sticking to it.  If that doesn’t work I’ll fill my swimming pool with burgers, hotdogs and apple pie to create the largest and worst casserole in history.  It will be my contribution to putting America back on the world map for something now that proton collisions and foreclosure guidance have been outsourced overseas.  Bon appétit B of A!