1:10 A.M. — Cora Mooney-Graves believed she had her Cape Coral house sold with a willing buyer and approval of the bank for a short sale.

But the buyer and the backup buyer had both put offers in for several other houses and bailed out before Mooney-Graves’ lenders gave approval to sell her house for $200,000.

Now, she may have to start over on the time-consuming short-sale process, in which a bank forgives part of its mortgage so a homeowner can set a realistic price at which to sell a house

It’s a problem some Realtors say is becoming common in the frenzied Cape Coral housing market, where buyers put in multiple offers to assure they get at least one house before someone beats them to it.

"If a deal falls apart on a short sale,” said Fiona Finn of The Finn Team Realty, the seller’s agent has little time to get another buyer in place before the bank’s deadline for a sale passes. Then the whole process has to start over again.

The problem isn’t as pronounced outside the Cape, Finn said. "I haven’t seen it that much in Fort Myers.”

Paula Hellenbrand of Encore Realty, who’s also president of the Cape Coral Association of Realtors, said the practice is growing common but seller’s agents also are sometimes doing the same thing. "They can cancel just as easily as the buyer.”
Sellers have tactics available to them to thwart indiscriminate offers, she said: They have the option not to take multiple offers or to require a prospective buyer to put down a deposit — although that’s rare in this market.

"The right way to do it is one offer, signed by the seller, and anybody else is a backup offer,” with the backups knowing they won’t get the deal unless the first offer falls apart, said Hellenbrand, who represents about the same number of buyers as sellers.

Buyers who want to lock in a sale might be better advised to bid aggressively, said Patti Pietroniro with McWilliams Buckley & Associates in Fort Myers.

"I’m telling my buyers, if you really like the house, right now you need to go higher than the asking price,” Pietroniro said.

Suzanne Sherer of Re/Max Realty Team, who’s president of the Realtor Association of Greater Fort Myers and the Beach, said the the long-term solution to the problem is legislation encouraging a more proactive stance by banks when a borrower starts to get into trouble.

"What they should be doing is that when that borrower is in trouble, they need to get an appraisal, set a realistic list price and realistic terms,” and get the short sale done quickly and cleanly, Sherer said.

The association’s rules let a seller enter into a contract with one buyer so the house is listed as a "contingent short sale” in which other buyers can be in the backup position and know that’s where they are.

"You have to go into this eyes wide open,” Sherer said.

Anthony DiMarco, Tallahassee-based executive vice president of the Florida Bankers Association, said he hasn’t heard from bankers around the state that there’s a major problem with buyers making multiple offers and then accepting just one.

"I have heard that what’s happening if lenders are getting multiple offers on the same property” but not making offers on other properties as well, DiMarco said.

Offers on multiple houses would have a bad effect on the market, DiMarco said. "That would slow things down for all the lenders. It just adds to the volume” of work to be done.

Hellenbrand said eventually, the falling percentage of short sales could help solve the problem.

"The number of short sales is actually decreasing in the Cape,” she said. "At one time it was 79 percent short sales and foreclosures (put back on the market by the lender),” but now it’s less than half.

According to statistics from the Realtor Association of Greater Fort Myers and the Beach, there were 1,779 short-sale listings in September compared with 1,444 a year earlier countywide.

Mooney-Graves said she mainly just wants to get her house sold and move on.

"I moved in the house in 2006 and it was really going to be my retirement,” she said. "At that time these houses were selling for $380,000 to $420,000. I was actually going to keep it for a few years and then sell it, and with the profit I was going to make that was going to be a little retirement egg.”

But prices kept falling, and now the house is on the market for $200,000.

"At this point,” Mooney-Graves said, "we’re praying a lot.”