SimpleRe has an update on his quest to get a conduit loan assumption approved in order to sell a property.
My original frustration was that they were moving so slowly. On 8/15/07, the day after my last post about this matter, I started calling around to see if I could get an ally within Key Bank to exert some pressure. To my pleasant surprise that same day I received a call from the head of the Transactions Group in Dallas before any of my acquaintances within Key had a chance to call or email them. It turns out that the management is competent and had, on their own, realized that my file was languishing and reached out to me to assure me that they were prioritizing it. They told me that it would soon be passed from their hands into the hands of the Special Servicer. In fact, they said it should all be written up and passed along by Monday, August 20th.So far so good. I had a smile on my face. I couldn't believe my good fortune.
But then things took a turn for the worse. On Monday the 20th both the Buyer and I get a last minute request for some additional information. I was perturbed because it was information that they could have requested weeks ago if only they had reviewed the file more carefully at some point in the first 14, 21, or even 30 days.
Now today, a week later, our underwriter calls the Buyer to tell him she is not inclined to approve the assumption. I'm blown away. Her reason is that the Buyer doesn't have the experience needed to make her comfortable with him doing his own property management.
Read on. It gets better.
I wonder if this is reflective of conduit lenders new underwriting standards. A lot has been written of late about conduit lenders repricing loans and dropping some of the more generous provisions that were available in recent years. Here, I wonder if there's some hesitancy on the lender's part to let someone assume a loan that they don't have a prior relationship with as a way of reducing risk.
Update: There's another update on the saga.
The original post can be found here.