Investor offer stand a chance after higher offer being submitted to lender?

[Steve Norton]

Hello fellow investors!
This is my first post on the forum. I have been reading a lot and found that there are many great contributors, so I've decided to join!

I am a realtor, but it is time to put the investor hat.

I have several short sales working as listing agent. I have offers from end buyers on all of them and I am doing the negotiations myself.

Well, on one of them the buyer decided to walk away after waiting 2 months for bank's assignment of a negotiator. (FHA loan)
Now that there is no buyer, I would like to step in and do the option contract and put an offer on it to submit to the bank.
The lender has not even assigned a negotiator and has not requested a BPO either. They do still have the short sale package in their system including the buyer's offer, HUD 1, etc... but they haven't looked at it yet and it's been 2 months.
I have not called to let them know that the buyer walked away.

Obviously the offer I would make as an investor is a lot lower than the one they have in their system so I am a bit worried about the potential of the deal.

My questions are the following:

1) Should I call to let them know the buyer walked and to withdraw the initial offer? This is CHASE Keep in mind they haven't even assigned a negotiator. We are still at zero I would say.

2) Will the fact that they already have a higher offer in their system and they know that a buyer was already willing to offer that much, make it a lot harder for them to approve a low ball offer I will make as an investor?

The good thing is that I already know what an end buyer would buy this home for and I can adjust my offer to be lower than that but not too low for them to close the file for insufficient offer.

What are your thoughts on this?

I would appreciate any insight!

Thanks