Buying Pre-foreclosure (Short Sale?) Property

[Becky Hiu]

Hi all. 

Need some direction/advice here. 

Short background: I currently co-own 3 SFRs in the Des Moines, IA area (started investing in 2012) and have always used a trusted RE agent for the purchases with the exception of 1 of them, as the Seller had a dedicated RE attorney for closing and we avoided the RE agent.

However, stumbled across a deal where a friend's neighbor is selling a rental she owns as her previous renters were evicted due to disability to pay monthly rent. She is currently in pre-foreclosure (I think? Unsure of the right "terminology"). Also, is a short sale = pre-foreclosure? The Seller doesn't know much about how protocol/procedures work in the real estate arena and we are trying to avoid using our RE agent to lower cost of purchase so we (my business partners and I) trying to do as much legwork as possible. We have not much/no experience in the pre-foreclosure/short sale area.

We contracted a local RE attorney to draft us a Purchase Agreement (PA) and we handed that to her for her signature, which she did. However, she doesn't know what to do with it and neither do we, really. We are already pre-approved for the loan and are waiting for her to contact her lender for next steps. She instead gave us her lender's contact info along with her loan info to ask us to proceed. Is the ball in our court or is it in hers? I tried calling her lender but they will not speak to me. I talked to our lender and said the Seller is responsible for next steps. I suggested calling her lender via conference call so we can clarify steps with her authorizing me to speak on her behalf, but haven't heard from her since then.

My understanding is that she needs to send our PA to her lender for approval and they will deal with our lender. Is this accurate or am I in the wrong lane?

Any advice/direction will be helpful. It's been 2 months since she signed that PA and we are getting to the point of frustration. Should we just contract a RE agent to finish the job? 

Thanks,

Becky H