How do we purchase our neighbors pre-foreclosed house?

[Mary M]

My husband and I are looking for a larger home for our family. We found out that one of the homes on the next street over is in pre-foreclosure. We don't know the person that lives there and don't know what the house looks like except for the general info like sq. footage and the lot. From the zillow photos it looks like a house we would be interested in. A few days later an agent that we had talked to about a house that he was selling told us about this same exact house that he will be listing soon. He said the house isn't ready and the people living in it are slow and are not returning calls or wanting to show it yet. He keeps giving us an excuse or is giving us conflicting information. I didn't say anything to him that we found out it was in pre-foreclosure but he didn't either. He also gave us the price he was going to list it for and it's about 400,000 more than what the opening bid is once I guess it's in auction. So what is going on here? Does he actually have the listing...is he buying it to flip or what? How can we go about getting this home without this agent? First he told us that he just got the listing and then he said he's had the listing for 3 months now! I don't get it.