Help with a short sale
Hi Bigger Pockets friends, I have a very unique situation with a property that I'm trying to buy and I need some help. It's quite a long story, but I'll try to include as many details as I can. My wife and I found a property in the neighborhood that we want to be in that has a basement apartment, perfect for a house hack. The house is being foreclosed on. Our friends used to live in the basement and we were able to get contact information from them for the seller. Turns out the owner is deceased and her daughter hired a real estate agent to try to do a short sale. They listed the property, we made an offer, and because of the relationship we had made with the seller, she accepted our offer. We signed the contract, the short sale package was submitted to the bank, and everything was looking great. This was back in February. Since then, we have had very few updates from the listing agent on the status of the short sale. We (my agent, lender, and myself) have tried to reach out to her a couple times a week to try to get updates, and no response. There are currently tenants living in the property (not paying rent) so we haven't seen the upstairs or been able to do an inspection. We found out about a month ago that the eviction process (which we were told was started months ago) has come to a halt because of a title issue. The daughter of the owner didn't want to pay legal fees to file for probate and they were hoping to be able to sign a document that will allow the descendants to sell the property without filing for probate. Apparently the judge denied that request. So essentially they can't take the tenants to eviction court because there is technically no one that owns the property right now. After finding this out, we decided to still move forward, wait for short sale approval from the bank, and then handle the eviction ourselves (possibly cash for keys). After not hearing any updates for quite awhile, I called the seller again today to see if she could give me any more information. Turns out the bank is not cooperating with her nor her agent. They won't give them any information on the short sale because she is not listed on the title. The seller has no motivation to pay for any legal fees to fix the title issue because she's getting nothing out of the deal. She essentially doesn't care anymore what happens to the house. My questions for anybody that might be able to help are these: What would you guess the bank's plan of action would be from here on out? We know that they have postponed the foreclosure auction indefinitely, but maybe they're going to schedule a new auction and go that route again? Can they do that with a title issue like this? Do I have any other options in this situation? Can I front the money for the legal fees to file for probate on the sellers' behalf in order to keep things moving? Any information you can give me would be very helpful. Thank you in advance!!