Yeah, the fax thing still blows my mind—had to dust off an old machine in the office last month for a lender who “couldn’t accept email.” You’re right about the docs, though. I’ve had underwriters claim too many PDFs made it harder to process, which just feels backwards. Ever tried splitting up your uploads by category instead of one big file? Sometimes that gets fewer complaints, but then you risk them missing stuff anyway. Curious if anyone’s actually had a lender move faster because you gave them less? I’ve never seen it happen.
Never seen a lender actually speed things up just because you sent less paperwork. If anything, I’ve had them come back asking for stuff I already included, just because it wasn’t in the “right” pile. Honestly, feels like there’s no winning with some of these underwriters. Has anyone tried just sending hard copies instead of digital files? Wondering if that cuts down on the back-and-forth or just adds another headache.
Yeah, I hear you. Sending less paperwork never made things faster for me either—if anything, it just led to more emails asking for stuff I’d already sent. Hard copies? Tried that once, but it just slowed everything down and got lost in the shuffle. Digital’s a pain, but at least there’s a paper trail when they claim something’s missing. My advice: over-communicate, label every doc clearly, and expect at least one round of “can you resend?” no matter what.
Title: Getting a lender to budge on underwater home sales—tips?
Yeah, I’m with you on the paperwork mess. Digital’s not perfect, but at least you can track what you sent and when. Hard copies are just asking for trouble—had a file “lost” in the mail once and it set me back weeks.
A few things I’ve noticed dealing with lenders on underwater properties:
- They’ll always ask for more docs, even if you sent them already. It’s like they’re hoping you’ll give up or miss something.
- Over-communicating helps, but sometimes it feels like shouting into the void. I’ve had situations where I labeled everything, sent cover sheets, and still got the “missing info” email.
- If you can get a direct contact (not just the generic loss mitigation inbox), that speeds things up. Not always possible, but worth pushing for.
- Don’t trust their timelines. If they say 30 days, plan for 60. I’ve had approvals drag out so long buyers walked away.
- One trick: send everything as one PDF with a table of contents up front. Cuts down on “I didn’t see page 7” nonsense.
Honestly, sometimes it feels like lenders are just stalling to avoid taking the loss on their books until they absolutely have to. Not saying every rep is bad, but the system’s set up to be slow and frustrating.
Biggest thing is persistence. If you’re not following up every week (sometimes more), stuff falls through the cracks fast. And yeah...expect to resend at least once no matter how organized you are.
Curious if anyone’s actually had a lender move quickly on an underwater deal? Closest I got was during COVID when they were swamped and just wanted files off their desk...but that was the exception, not the rule.
Had a client last year where we were neck-deep in this exact mess. The lender’s “missing document” routine drove us nuts—at one point, they claimed they never got the hardship letter, even though I had email receipts and a fax confirmation. Ended up resending everything twice, with big bold labels on every page. Still took three months to get a response.
One thing that helped: I started copying their supervisor on every follow-up after week four. Not in an aggressive way, just a quick “looping in X for visibility.” Suddenly, responses sped up. Not lightning fast, but better than before.
I’ve noticed if you can show you’ve got a real buyer lined up (with proof of funds or pre-approval), sometimes that lights a fire under them. They hate the idea of starting over if the deal falls apart.
But yeah, most of the time it’s just slow going. The only time I saw a lender move fast was when their own portfolio was at risk of looking worse for quarterly reporting... then it was like someone flipped a switch. Otherwise, patience and relentless follow-up are about all you can count on.