Making an offer on a short sale?

Obviously seeing that this is my first post- I'm new here! I have been lurking for a while and everyone has given such great advice. I was wondering if anyone could help me with this:

Me and my husband are completely clueless about the whole process of homebuying (ok, maybe not so clueless..lol). We did get a letter of pre-approval, and we want to put an offer on a short sale. My question is, what exactly would you do to put an offer on a short sale? Would they have you sign a contract? I don't have any agent representing me, and I was thinking of having a real estate attorney talk me through even the process of putting an offer. Once you put an offer, how can you put contingencies on it (inspection, mortgage commitment, etc)? Or, do those things get cleared out during the contract? I think my main question is, what does putting an offer on a house involve?

Lol...ok, I had so many questions, and if you read through all of that and made it to here- thanks soooo much!

Re: Making an offer on a short sale?

we did two short sale offers in the past that did not work out......

first, id find out how many mortgages are on the house - if its 1 than i say go for it - if there are 2 mortages its usually a longer, harder process - we ended up walking away from a house b/c of the 2nd mortgage after about 4.5 months

when we did our offers our contingencies were that we could walk away after 45 days if there was no response from the bank and we also made it so that no other offers were submitted to the bank and the property was no longer marketed - we had 10 days to inspect after acceptance from the lien holder and if there was something we didn't like on the inspection we were able to walk away.....

short sales are a pain in the a$$

good luck!!

Message edited 6/16/2009 11:40:17 AM.

Re: Making an offer on a short sale?

Thanks for answering!

Re: Making an offer on a short sale?

We are also in the process of buying a short sale..and I think most would agree that if you have the time to spare and wait it out, you could get a really good deal.

If you have any questions feel free to FM me.

Re: Making an offer on a short sale?

we are probably going to look at three short sales this week if we back off from buying this house (regular sale) my question is:

We offer what we can afford to offer so we put the offer in do you put money down right then and there and if so how much?