Short Sale Op

[Shane M]

Hey everyone, just gotto say I am soaking up everything I can on this site and will hopefully be providing what insight I can to others as well, but I digress!

I am looking at my first deal, it is a short-sale about 70-80% of market value! I'm trying to get in contact with the owner to take a tour and make sure there are no major problems, but with the short-sale situation it appears that the owners just need to get out! The short-sale is supposedly already approved (with 24-hour notice), which I guess is my first question because I thought they typically needed a month? In addition to that I was thinking about:

1) Getting an FHA mortgage and living in it for a bit, then renting it out afterward.
2) How I would go about renting the property out after I moved, I currently have an LLC taxed as sole-proprietor, would I just have the tenant cut my business a check instead of me personally?
3) I don't have the cash to put down 20% for a mortgage for an investment property, but I was thinking since it is ALREADY below market value, I could just flip it right off the bat. The RE books I have read about this say it is possible but I don't see it actually going through unless I actually have the money ready to go from the bank. I have to pay the owners before I re-list it don't I? And in the meantime I can just live in it?

Also, since this looks like it is a real deal (I've been looking for months at something in my price range), should I lock up the owner by making a conditional offer of some sort with a deposit that doesn't allow them to sell to someone else?

My FICO is about 730 right now, with about 30K of outstanding student loan debt, I shouldn't have a problem getting approved for the mortgage.

Any advice, suggestions, etc would be appreciated.