I read some of your articles on About.com.

I am a potential buyer. We have bought several properties in the past but are very inexperienced with short sales. We have been looking for a home for a long time and have not been able to find what we are looking for until now, except that the property is a short sale and an offer has already been submitted to the lender. So, instead of just walking away, I am hoping to learn a little more about how short sales work in the hope that we may have a chance at purchasing this house if we approach it in the right way.

The seller agent has submitted an offer to the lender but the lender has not accepted it yet (I have a feeling that the seller agent is not very experienced with short sales either and just sent it to a department and has not had much communication with the lender). We are strong buyers with 60% down, a three figure salary, and pre-approved loan, but I don’t know if this is even considered in a short sale. We want to make a competing offer and would have done so via the seller’s agent, but the seller’s agent will not submit our offer to the bank because she already has an offer she submitted and says it may seat at someone’s desk for months before she hears back from them. The lender still has not accepted/approved this offer, but the seller agent will only accept our offer as a backup offer and will not submit it to the lender unless the first offer made is declined. She tells me that you cannot submit two offers to a lender. Is this so?

Prior to this conversation with the seller’s agent it was my understanding that until the offer is accepted by the lender, multiple offers can be made and presented to the lender. I would imagine that lenders actually like and prefer receiving competing offers, is this not so? If so, I am wondering why this agent will not submit our full price offer to the lender. Is she right to do this? Is there anything we can do about it?

Do you have any other advice for us? We would normally not try to pursue something like this, but this home is exactly what we have been looking for for months and we have not seen anything else that meets all our criterias. The lender is GMAC.

I thank you for your time and attention and very much look forward to hearing back from you.

Gabby