From the Palm Beach Post this weekend:

The overburdened short-sale process is leaving some homeowners with the short end of the stick.

Several months after a local couple tried to avoid foreclosure by selling their Palm City home in a short sale, the bank that rejected their offer has resold the property - for about $40,000 less than the short sale offer they came up with.

Behind on their mortgage and forced to move to Miami-Dade County for work, Reggie and Noelvis Capiro this summer petitioned their lender, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, and its servicing company to allow a short sale on their three-bedroom, three-bath house. They found a buyer who was willing to pay $400,000, about $40,000 less than they owed on the mortgage.

The bank countered at $520,000, and the deal fell apart, according to the Capiros' agent, Dave Derrenbacker, owner of Water Pointe Realty Group in Stuart.

The Capiros lost the home to foreclosure in June, and the bank this month sold the house to a new buyer. The sale price this time: $360,000, according to Multiple Listing Service data.

In the end, the bank got paid about $40,000 less than it would have had it gone through the short sale offered by the Capiros.

Most stinging, perhaps, is that the Capiros now have the blemish of a foreclosure on their credit record.

Derrenbacker said the problem with short sales is communication, especially within some of the big banks. He dealt with a loss-mitigation department that probably doesn't communicate with the people who set the price for the property as a foreclosure, he said. Wells Fargo has declined comment on the Capiro case.

"There's definitely success stories out there," Derrenbacker said. "But there's a big frustration level on everyone from sellers to buyers to the Realtors who are involved. There really needs to be a more standardized practice on how everybody handles short sales."

This problem is also widespread locally. Banks lose in two ways. They aren't just making bad bets on sales prices, they're also spending thousands of dollars more than they should on legal fees processing the foreclosures.