Today is day 75 since submitting our offer and we just received a call from our agent with a message from the short sale bank (NS). The second mortgage lender has asked for $12,500 to close and the NS has agreed to give them $6,000. The bank is now asking us (the buyers) and the sellers if we will make up the difference.

Some more info: All docs have were processed by NS quickly and BPO was ordered and completed on day 30. Our offer (we are the buyers) was $320K for a home worth somewhere between $310K and $350K based on comps.

Here are a couple of quick questions I have:

1 - Is there some room for negotiation with NS for them to give more to the second? Or is this likely fixed at this point?

2 - If we initially tell the seller's agent that we do not want to put more money into our offer, and the seller subsequently denies covering the deficit, will the bank reject the offer or will we have another chance to cover the short fall?

3 - Is it safe to assume that if we cover this deficit we will get the approval at this stage? We have asked NS to put something in writing stating such, since they have not asked us to increase our offer for any other reason (i.e. high BPO value). Any chance they also ask us to bring our offer up to market value AFTER agreeing to cover the deficit?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated so we can start talking with the seller and bank.

Thanks!