Dear Mortgage Company,

Way back on the third of November we put in a bid on a house and wrote a deposit check for it. Since the house is a "short-sale" it seemed to me, we wouldn't have long to wait to hear from you. After all, I assumed you wouldn't want to foreclose if you didn't have to.

About a month later, we heard that our offer was in a file in a pile on a negotiator's desk. Sounded good, right? Then in January I was given to believe that it had moved up channels to someone else's desk. Finally, two days ago I heard that you were requesting paperwork from the seller, but it was a form they would have submitted back in November that has likely grown stale.

It has been over four months since we made the offer and there has been no response to that offer from you, the mortgage holder.

I take that pretty seriously. Yes, I've heard that short-sales (which should really be called long-sales) will still come through as long as six-months after the bid, but I've also heard of banks sending property to foreclosure during the short-sale process--even while houses are in escrow, and turning down decent offers--which makes no sense in a declining market.

What this means to me and the DH is that the bank isn't really interested enough in moving this property to actually move it. So, yesterday we shook off our complacency and started to look elsewhere.

Wouldn't you know it? We found another house.