Since the influx of short-sale and bank-owned homes I have been waiting for the Tucson Association of Realtors (TAR) to get on board and add specific designations in our MLS system to address these items. It is entirely too cumbersome to search the Tucson MLS on keywords in the description fields when looking for a lender-owned home or home going through a short sale.
I don’t know how many times I’ve run the same search with the following keywords in the “Description field” and gotten different results: lender, bank, reo, foreclosure, foreclosed, short sale, short. And then, some agents only put these keywords in the “Agent Remarks” section (only us Realtors get to see those) so that makes it even more time consuming.
What’s the hold up? Apparently ARMLS (the MLS for the Greater Phoenix Area) has two such indicators to search on, “Lender/Corp Approval Required” and “Lender Owned Property”. Many other MLS’s across the nation have the same capability and yet we have not caught on.
It reminds me of the short sale addendum situation for TAR; I was at a special short-sale information session a few weeks ago and TAR finally has a draft of an official TAR created short-sale addendum; I just wish it would have been done last year.
Granted, most offices/companies already have their own version of a SS addendum but the TAR form should eliminate the headache of not having a standardized form.
Not only would having these additional search criteria make it easier for us Realtors but it would make it easier for consumers as well. Let’s hope it gets changed soon!
Possibly Related Posts
2 comments ↓
Michael, indeed ARMLS does have 2 fields for “lender owned property” and “lender/corp approval required”. However, they are poorly used (even though that’s a rules violation). If you don’t also note a short sale in the remarks, agents get rather irritated…primarily because so many of them don’t know about the required fields.
The other problem with ARMLS, is that you need a custom search to find listings that use those fields, thus limiting their effective use further, from those agents not savvy enough to know about the fields, where to find them, or how to do a good custom search.
What’s missing in ARMLS, is a good status for short sales, in which an offer has been accepted by the seller, and is waiting on bank approval. As you lobby for better short sale identifiers, I would highly recommend you lobby for a way to properly track the entire short sale from listing, to contract, to escrow, to close.
Good luck!
Thanks for stopping by Steve.
Sounds like ARMLS has some work to do also; you would think they would make it as easy as possible to use those designations considering the amount of homes that fall under that category.
I’ll keep everyone posted with my efforts at TARMLS.
Leave a Comment
I've also deleted the rel='nofollow' for hyperlinks, I think anyone who leaves a comment deserves a link to their site!