By Sean A. Kelly

Bank of America Equator is a computer database and workflow system developed by Equator Financial Solutions and implemented by Bank of America to handle short sales. With its help, Bank of America hope to assist their short sale team with the processing of the huge volume of short sale applications that are being received by the bank. This system caters to both Bank of America loans and loans previously held by Countrywide. One of its purposes is to prevent foreclosure on a property that is in the midst of a short sale. The bank requires that all new applications be submitted through the Bank of America Equator application. While this seems to be the case for all senior loans, the junior loans or HELOCs are still being processed via the traditional fax method.

A short sale allows a borrower to sell the home for less than the total amount due on the mortgage loan secured by the home. The recent economic recession has led to high unemployment levels, declining home values and this has resulted in many families to opt for short sales. The Equator Bank of America Mortgage system has been designed with the intention to help the borrower avoid foreclosure and to reduce some of the lender’s loss by avoiding or minimizing foreclosure activities. This secure, password-protected internet portal has been deployed with the objective of shortening response times and improving overall communication.

Through the Equator Bank of America refinance application, real estate professionals and homeowners can track the status of short sales around-the-clock. The application allows real-time viewing and exchanging of documents and tracking of important dates and deadlines for homeowners, agents and bank representatives thus significantly improving communication between all parties involved. Whether you are considering refinancing your home, or have to necessarily opt for a short sale, this application can come in handy. However, Bank of America tend to have high fees and generally have a lengthy loan process as discovered recently by my cousin Adam.

It so happened that a few years ago Adam had bought a property in Nevada and during the course of the next few years discovered that it was unaffordable. The recession was taking its toll on him and he was somehow able to cling to his job, although he had to accept a reduced pay. He had a personal loan to handle and wasn’t exactly discreet in the use of his credit cards. His mounting debt had landed him in an extremely tight financial situation and the only option for him was to go for a short sale on his property in order to avoid filing for bankruptcy. His agent advised him to submit a short sale application to Bank of America on their Equator portal, and the file was submitted in July. The file was processed through the regular fax submission channel.

After nearly a month of the submission, they received a telephone call stating that they needed to resubmit their file before any more work would be done. They complied and uploaded all the files into Equator.

Two months after the upload, there still was no new status on the file. Adam and his agent found out that it was an error that no one had picked up the processing of this file. They escalated the matter and reached a manager who agreed to have the file directly assigned to a member of his team.

After patiently waiting for another month, they came to know that all of the files that they uploaded had been lost by Bank of America, and they were asked to re-upload all the files. In December, they were told that their application has been rejected because their buyer’s pre-approval letter had expired. They were again asked to re-upload all the files in the application along with the new pre-approval letter since there is no field to upload one file. This case has been escalated to the manager and Adam is still struggling to get his application through.

While Bank of America Mortgage does appear to be a good choice for many folks looking for a loan, their Equator portal seems to require a lot of streamlining. To any agent taking a file from Bank of America or Countrywide, I would advise that he or she make sure that the buyer realizes that they may have to wait 4-6 months before an approval letter is received.

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