1. Are Short Sale Lenders Interfering With Your Listing Agreement?
Are short sale lenders interfering with your listing agreement?
When you list a short sale you and your seller have a legally
binding listing agreement known as a contract. This is a bi-lateral
contract between you and the seller. There are no other parties signing
this contract except you and the seller.
So when the lender calls your sellers to tell them that there is too much
paperwork involved in a short sale and why don't they just cancel their
listing and do a deed in lieu- do you consider that a tort interference

2. of a contract? Tort interference is when one party "convinces another
party to breach the contract". You must be able to prove you have a
contract- the listing agreement in this case.
The seller is not the bank's client. They are a customer of the bank.
The seller is a client of the agent in a short sale transaction most of the
time. The bank's client is the investor who owns the note of which the
bank is servicing. So the bank's client- the investor- is who the bank
has a fiduciary duty to- not the homeowner.
I would love to hear some attorneys chime in on this one.
When the first lender did this to one of our sellers we wrote it up for
ignorance but now this seems to be a new trend by the lenders.
Actually in the last 3 weeks different lenders have called 4 different
sellers to cancel their short sales and do deed in lieu.
Disclaimer: We are not attorneys and we are not giving you legal
advice.