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Seller is "leaning against FHA offers"
Hello!
This is my first post on this board. My husband and I started looking for a house about a month ago right after we were pre-approved for an FHA loan. We found a (short sale) house and want to put an offer in. Our REA called the listing agent to get some info before we put our offer in, and of course the listing agent said there are already two offers in. (I can't decide if this is just a tactic REA agents use or if it's the truth. The reason I wonder about this is wouldn't the seller have already accepted or declined these "other offers"?) Anyway, she said the one offer is is pretty low, and one is closer to asking price, but the sellers are still leaning against it. She said they are also trying to avoid FHA offers.
So, I guess my question is...should we not even waste anyone's time here, or should we just make an offer because we do love the house and we have nothing to lose? We'll be talking with our REA again this evening, but figured I'd post on here in the meantime. 
If we pass on it I'd like to say I'm going to stay away from short sales in the future, but it seems almost every house we've seen is a short sale!
Re: Seller is "leaning against FHA offers"
Do you know if it's a "pre-negotiated" short sale? Those are supposed to be a bit easier since the bank has already approved the amount.
My guess would be that they really do have offers. Usually if they don't the phrase is "there has been interest but no offers in hand". The seller is likely trying to find an offer with a high probability of being accepted by the bank. My realtor told us that FHA loans are harder because the bank operates under the possibility that you might not pay back a dime towards your mortgage. The sale price has to be on par with the appraisal amount, which can be tricky.
I would go ahead and put in the offer - the worst that can happen is that they say no. Being first-time home buys could give you an edge since you don't have anything to sell.
The seller might not want to accept an FHA offer because the FHA won't allow you to purchase a house that needs significant repairs, and most short sales are sold as-is.
However, if you LOVE this house, place a bid. You never know, the seller might realize that you're the best option!
This exactly. I assume the property probably wouldn't pass the FHA guidelines and the sellers won't/can't afford to make the repairs to get it to pass.
Thank you all for responding! I was thinking the same thing about the property maybe not passing the FHA guidelines. However, the house appears to be in great condition and is only 12 years old. You never know though. Talking to our REA in a few so hopefully he has some more info! Thanks again!
Ditto. We purchased a short sale house with an FHA loan and while none of the repairs we had to make were major, we had less than 30 days to close per the bank deadline. It was really tough to make all the repairs in time to have the appraiser come back out and reinspect and then have our mortgage folks get everything lined up. We literally had less than a week (and we were only able to do repairs after work) to repair a list of like 10 tasks. We were lucky that my FIL is a contractor so he was able to help - otherwise we would've been stuck trying to hire someone in that short amount of time and paying through the nose.