I was in your shoes just a few months ago. So thought you might be interested in what my experience has been. I’m just a joe-smoe home buyer without real estate experience so take it for what its worth…
We also tried to get pre-approval first and have dealt with all sorts of road blocks because we were looking at short sales. It seems that lenders are reluctant to give pre-approval for short sales. Although we finally got it, we could now lose it because of the rapidly changing rules of lending. We’ve been waiting to hear about a short-sale now for 40 days, we’ll get an extension on the rate lock but after that we’ll have to re-apply because the pre-approval expires after 90 days.
Also as you are sitting waiting the value of the house is dropping….I’ve read some articles that say you should put a time table on your offer which decreases over time. The two short sales I’ve been involved in there were multiple offers, so we didn’t do that.
My real estate agent is very experienced in short sales which has been a huge blessing.
I think that the advice to “put an offer in, forget about it, and keep looking for another house” is the best advice any one could give. I wish I’d thought of it that way when we first started.
