If you mean do they have to respond within a certain time frame, the answer is no. As you may have noticed from reading MND articles, this is a big problem. I too am an agent, and recently lost a property sale to foreclosure because the bank processing the short sale did not respond in time to stop the pending foreclosure. We had a qualified, willing buyer but could not get approval for the sale from the bank before the buyer decided to back out, and the foreclosure took place. Bank responses to short sale and REO offers have been very slow so far. It depends on how many REOs or short sales the staff is trying to process. But the time frame is not controlled by any rules or requirements.