Fannie Mae Questions

[Randy Murphy]

Hello all:

Been wanting to buy a home for a while and finally got the opportunity on a Fannie Mae Homepath property.  Asking price was $165900 after dropping by $70000 in the past 5 months.  Its a foreclosure.  Got the preapproval and made the offer for the asking price, plus asked for 3% closing as well as a short list of other requests such as septic, termites, home warranty, etc.  All together it amounted to around $7000 we were asking them to pay. 

Put the offer in, and within 3 hours our realtor called to say there was another offer and they were asking for our highest best offer.  We increased our bid by $10000.  The next morning, our realtor called again and stated the listing agent contacted him and said that if we took off one of our requests, we would be much better off.  It was a soil thing that is required by where we live which was an $800 cost.  We did that and waited.

Here is the mystery which maybe someone can explain.  We got they accepted our offer, but they accepted our original $165900, not our higher offer.  On top of that they agreed to pay all of our other requests.  Why would a seller accept a lower bid rather then the higher offer?

Second question:  We signed the offer on our end and now we are just waiting for Fannie Mae to sign the contract so we can move forward.  How long dies it take fir Fannie Maw to do this?  We want to get things going but hate the wait.

Thanks