Man Caught In Deed-In-Lieu Of Foreclosure Hell

Since he had to get rid of his house and move to take advantage of some new opportunities, Joe has been working for months to get Chase to accept a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure on his condo in Chicago. A deed-in-lieu is when you hand over your house to the bank rather than go through a normal foreclosure process that is lengthy and costly for both parties. He met the requirements and began his descent into hell, full of lost paperwork, unreturned calls, and missed deadlines, despite contacting the executive offices of Chase, Freddie Mac, and Chase Home lending. Finally he catches a break, only to have his hopes snatched away again at the last moment…

Now they won’t move forward because he doesn’t have an active listing. An active listing? What agent is going to list a dead property like this? Joe used to have an active listing, for a long time, but it fell off because of the bank delays. What can he do now?

Joe writes:

After contacting the heads of Chase and of the Home Lending department we were assigned a new contact within the Home Executive Lending Office. She is a very nice and knowledgeable employee. We re-faxed the paperwork and she pushed it through.

This morning, she contacted me about our packet not including an active listing agreement. Quick history. Our listing agreement expired in July, well after 90 days had passed and 2 months after we initially started this process. Today I was informed that our packet was rejected because we no longer have an active listing agreement, even though the Freddie Mac guidelines only demand 90+ days on the market AND when we started the entire process there was an active listing agreement that was over 90 days. To further complicate the problem, they said we need a new active listing agreement that is active for 90 days. How are we going to be able to do this? What agent would spend the money to list a property that he really has no hope of selling?

Is there any advice or anything that can be done within Chase to get them to acknowledge that we did meet the requirements, both in days and that at the time of filing we had an active listing agreement and that due to the fact that Chase has lost/messed up the two prior applications we no longer have an active listing?

Thank you for any help you can provide,

Joe

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