Are Short Sale Double Closings Dead?

One of the mainstream strategies involved in working foreclosures and short sales is the "art" of the flip. The basic idea of a "flip" is to negotiate the purchase price with a foreclosing lender (that is based on their Broker Price Opinion and your negotiation skills) that is less than the price in which the property could be sold to another buyer. 

If the difference between what the bank would accept and the end buyer's purchase price is large enough (including closing costs and etc.), this "spread" in the numbers can result in a nice profit for the savvy investor. 

Normally these buy and re-sell transactions (called back-to-back, double, A and B, or simultaneous closings) would happen on the same day, or even a few minutes apart. In the "old" days, it was fairly common to have the entire double close transaction funded by a single source of funds. 

Then the foreclosing lenders started to change some of the language in their approval letters. This new language prevented title companies from performing double-close transactions with a single funding source. The work-around in the investor community was to have a separate funding source for the buy side (A side) and a separate funding source for the re-sell side (the end buyer, B side). 

This resulted in two separate closings with two funding sources.