A few days after I submitted the offers, both houses were cancelled and withdrawn off of the MLS.

If you have the furnace guy come out and fix the furnace, he's not going to be happy about waiting three weeks while you submit a request for payment to the custodian, they review it and then finally mail a payment.

It takes maybe 15 min to write up and submit an offer.

Sounds like you did not submit the offer through a realtor.

If it were forwarded to the lender it would constitute Tortious Interference of an existing contract that could potentially cause you economic harm.See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference.Now on a side note: The latest GSE Arms Length Affidavits are including language that states that "The Highest and Best Offer has been submitted to the lender for review and that there are no other offers other than this offer that has been made on the property.

Once we submitted our assignment, they sorted the data and combined it with their list and distributed it to the students.

They seem to add on their own conditions or special program that makes it harder or easier to qualify, so no one really knows except the actual lenders who are giving you the loan (and even they get things kicked back once submitted to underwriting, and you have more hoops to jump through).

They also usually have problems with submitting low offers.

It is free and you submit payment via email.  

Photo identification and social security cards which can be copied are a must, if they don't want to submit the necessary documents, then I wouldn't rent to them.