Dear Huntington National Bank –
The addendum you are requiring potential home buyers to sign before you will even look at their offer is, in my opinion, ludicrous and borders on criminal.
I’ve seen a lot of banks put a lot of asinine things in their addendums that makes me question whether you people have a lick of sense, but you guys win the grand prize.
You all should be ashamed of yourselves and you should fire whoever wrote this load of bullshit you’re requiring people to sign.
Good luck with your attempts to fleece home buyers,
Jay Thompson
—–
That’s the letter I’m about to send to Huntington National Bank, the Arizona Association of Realtors, the National Association of Realtors, my elected officials, the AZ Department of Real Estate, the Attorney General’s office and anyone else I can think of.
Go read Heather Barr’s article on ThePhoenixAgents.com, Wrong on So Many Levels.
Seriously, read it. Heather outlines some absolutely ridiculous terms and conditions this bank is requiring a prospective home buyer to agree to ”“ before they will even LOOK at the offer.
Things like:
- Making the earnest money deposit non-refundable for any reason.
- Requiring inspections to be complete, or waiving the right to inspect the property ”“ again before the bank will even look at the offer.
- Forbidding access to the property unless the banks agent is present. (Really? The REO listing agents usually won’t even answer the phone, email, text or smoke signal. And now they have to be physically present?)
- Removing the financing contingency (in other words, if your loan falls apart you still have to buy the home. So come up with lots of cash, or kiss your earnest money goodbye).
There is more. It makes me want to puke.
What really makes me ill is the knowledge that there are a LOT of people out there trying to buy bank owned homes. And every lender has their own flavor of these insane addendums.
I’ll bet you a lot of those addendums are never read. Some agents say “sign here” and people do just that.
Potential buyers of REO / bank owned / foreclosure properties need to read every word of every document the lender requires you to sign. Every single word. If there is anything in there that you don’t fully understand the ramifications of, discuss it with your agent, or a real estate attorney. These lenders don’t care one thing about you. It’s all about them. They write 10 page addendums in arcane legalese that can cost you thousands of dollars.
And they’ll be the first ones whining to Congress and asking for a handout (and more of your money) when their financials crumble.
Be very very careful out there”¦
.
The Phoenix Real Estate Guy was started by Jay Thompson, and I have a little blogging problem... he liked to say...
That's why I'm glad we found the listing we did, Jay. Even the slight taste I got of the foreclosure game was enough to sour me on it completely.
Thanks for another great post, Jay. I enjoy reading your blog.
Ken – foreclosures can be painful. We've had to recommend to many clients to walk away because of ridiculous requirements in their addendum's.
How do you walk away from the addendum Do you need a signed release. We handed in a very carefully written AOS and the response was an addendu from hell. We are not signing it but I want to be sure that we are free and clear of it.
People need to be aware of what is going on. It is criminal and they are not playing by the rules. Who let them off the hook. How can they rewrite the definitions of the menaing of terms in a real estate contract.
Well thanks Bubba! I appreciate you reading!!
You would think with the saturation of foreclosed homes on the market, banks would be less prone to some of these ridiculous demands. If it were me, I'd want to move as much as possible as quickly as possible to recover from my loss.
and here is the thing Buyers.. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BUY IT!!. I try to tell my buyers, why mess with this banks REO crap when you negotiate sucessfully with an individual who can actually hand over a clean title!! WTH is going on?
Everything is Caveat Emptor – "Buyer Beware" and read the frickin' fine print. Thanks for the heads up, once again Jay.
You're problem here Ken is you are applying logic and common sense — two things that banks in general are severely lacking…. 😉
Jay, a team of 27 lawyers would not be able to agree on most of these bank addendums. It is a shame that banks choose to have such heavy handed requirements and monkey with the balanced standard contracts that most real estate agents use. I advise my Clients to read addendums carefully and understand that most of their rights are gone. Furthermore they should consult a real estate attorney to try and understand the conflicts the addendums create.It seems to me that the addendums getting even worse. I am eagerly waiting the day where more bank owned sales are on the market with less pent up demand from buyers, I think this is the only way we will see them back off these ridiculous and unethical requirements as banks find themselves trying to attract buyers.A while back I wrote a post: Bank Owned Bingo – 5 Tips for Success where this very topic was discussed.http://www.sandiegolifestyle.info/2009/02/bank-…..Thanks for sharing with us – best to drag this stuff out into the light of day where it belongs.
I just took a quick look at the troubled asset information for The Huntington National Bank… they have a troubled asset ratio in excess of 50% as of June 30. Compare this to the national median of 13%.http://banktracker.investigativereportingworksh…..Excellent blog Jay.
You have raised brilliant questions. I agree with you these bank agreements are too fake to understand what they actually want. It is tough for customers to understand there hidden clauses.
Hey Jay this is nuts. It's bad enough they are ruining the market. The bank agents to need to step up and remind them this is still a people business and we are dealing with everyday folks and not CEO's with mega attorneys tied at the hip. I wish buyers and agents would just Say No and then maybe they would get the hint.
Been there, and felt very uncomfortable going through a foreclosure and not knowing what kind of abuse the home took in the past year (or what's potentially clogging up the sewer lateral) and knowing that my clients wanted it (beat out 3 other offers, I did). And the addendum's totally supersede the standard Association contract language… and it isn't binding until signed by the bank… wait, wait, wait in limbo. Time to bring in a good real estate attorney for a consult.Okay, now off to Heather's post as required by JT.
That sounds like an illegal policy. They will run with it as long as they can and make as much money as they can before someone steps in to stop them. Most likely they can get rich before the courts sort everything out.-Tyler
Hmmm! If a bank is demanding these kinds of conditions be met, it sounds like only cash buyers with ultra low ball offers should play this game.
Awesome Post, Jay! I'm glad you got the blog back up and running, and I'll definitely add this to the Carnival tomorrow. BTW — the scary thing is that most people will NEVER read their paperwork, nor will their agent. These banks will keep pulling this crap for a long time to come, and unfortunately, a lot or people are going to get burned.
You think that's bad? Banks here in Colombia charge 18-20% interest on 15-year mortgages. But it is true, a bank in the U.S. that has a policy like that will not be in business for long. Too much competition. It won't be long before a big competitor uses this strategy in a P.R. campaign against them.
I have been fortunate to avoid such insane addedums during my previous REO transactions. I will educate my clients on avoiding Huntington National Bank. It would appear this bank is attempting to off set their asset ratio by keeping your client's earnest money. The banks I've dealt with actually want to sell the property.
Here is something from the WTF files and I don't know if this is illegal, but on a number of levels I have to say I think it's incredibly unethical…..and yes, I'm naming names as this can all be verified and I dknot know who all else to turn to to look for any answers…I recently went through a short sale on my home and was successsful thanks to a wonderful, fair, highly professional realtor with a big-name realty company. Initially, I interviewed a couple of other realtors, including hiring the company of Curtis Johhnson Realty. The primary reason I didn't go with them, they wanted a non-refundable retainer fee that they started to tell me would be many thousands of dollars (and with no guarantee of actually cclosing), but then continued to reduce it but wouldn't budge any lower than a couple of thousand dollars. What was also troubling is that they were going to then only offer 2% commission to the buyer's agent. I know the margins can be more uncertain, but most agents representing short sales offer at least 2.5%, and many more a full 3% (yes I understand it's negotiable but a higher fee will attract more buyer's agents). For these reasons I went elsewhere. After negotiating the sale of our home with an offer acceptable to the bank, we went looking for a home of our own. We looked at bank-owned as well as short-sale homes alike. Ironically, one of the homes we were interested in was a short-sale listing from Curtis Johnson Realty. To make a long story short, they wanted me, as a buyer, to pay the expenses incurred by their short sale sellers in obtaining a company called Vanquish, Inc. This fee was $4000 and they claimed they were highly reputable with country-wise expeirence and success (this can be found, apparently as an attached document to their listing on the MLS). Well, I'd not ever heard of a broker representing a seller and then trying to squeeze additional money from the buyer of the property, and my agent was able to negotiate a short sale with the bank and wasn't asking for any additional $4K to do the negotiations. Thank God for all the info on the internet! I did some searching and found that Vanquish, Inc. was under the name of Curtis Johnson's wife. Hence, this so-called third party was actually a shell company for Curtis Johnson Realty.So, for those keeping score, is this really what this industry has come to…..by my scorecard here's how this looks via Curtis Johnson's business model:Charge the seller whom they are representing several thousands of dollars in up-front, non-refundable retainer fees.Limit the number of potential buyers who will see the home while simultaneously keeping more for their company by offering a mere 2% to buyer's agents.To top it off, let's also stick it to that buyer agent's client by charging them an additional $4K to add to his company coffers.In all my life, I'm not sure I've ever seen such an attempt toswindle about every party involved in a real estate transaction. It's truly appalling.BUYER & SELLERS BEWARE!!!!
I got a contract last week with a $500 per diem. It was a 203K reno loan, I refused to take the loan with that in the contract.
Sounds like alot of whining to me.
Guess you want a return to buying with no money down.
Sad.
Actually Bob, the last thing I'd like to see is a return to buying with no money down. I've written plenty here about how the ridiculous access to loans was a big part of the housing crisis.
What Huntington (and many other banks) are doing has absolutely nothing to do with extending financing.
You can call it whining, I call it protecting my clients interests. Sorry, but that's my job.
Some of these banks addendum's take away many things that protect the consumer. Ironically, they are also damaging THEIR investors with their ridiculous demands.