Texas is a dual action foreclosure state.. they can and do go after deficiency judgments .. and the only way out would be a personal BKYou want to be in talks with them and negotiate out if your going to just try to short sell the property.. now during the financial crisis the fed's stayed the deficiency judgment rules on mortgages .. maybe they will do that for flood victims.. although it might only be owner occ's that get that treatment as investors are in a different class .I would also caution you on getting a lawyer that could just be throwing good money after bad..

My wife and I own an older home that need about $20K in repairs.  Based on the area we live in, our home has about $23K in equity.  Our home is currently too small for our family, so we would rather move into a larger...

The next step is to put in an offer leave a back door in your offer incase you change your mind, and ask the selling agent for some type of concession if he/she wants to work in a dual capacity or still better yet without blowing the transaction ask if it's alright to assign or bring in representation for your behalf, nothing wrong with it.

It sounds to me like dual representation on a potential bidding war would be a potential mess.I would focus on getting information about what the seller is looking to accomplish. 

And or if you want to dual purpose like maybe buy a rental that you could one day use for getting out of the NE winters FlA  SC coast all have some nice choice's FLA has some pretty hot bargains these days..

National real estate market news is a dual edge sword.

Thanks everyone for the valuable inputs..In my purchase contract, there is no indication that tenant will remain, but since I use dual agent, the agent and tenant know each other, my agent mentioned verbally that tenant would like to stay, and she advise tenant not to pay current owner (seller) during the short sell process..I would like seller to vacate the property at closing, but since there is connection between my agent and tenant, I am not sure how to proceed while not offend my agent.

Replacing like for like is a REPAIR, upgrading is a capital improvement.eg: replacing a single pane window with another single pane is a repair, but going to a dual or triple pane window is an improvement (extra insulation improving both cooling and heating)

We will be a dual income household in January - She just got out of school.

Maybe a dual approach?