You may have had some sort of conditional approval and clear to close, but if you just NOW got the approval for your offer, you did not have full underwriting or a real clear to close. That is just impossible if you just got your offer approved from the sellers bank. Clear to close means that titlework has been done, escrow is set up, , all docs from both parites are in, all funds have been sourced, etc. That is not what you had. Your lender may have started the paperwork based on the initial approval and paperwork, but everything starts now. With a short sale, it can take 60 or more days to close (although can sometimes go faster) once you have an approval on your offer. That is because every piece of info, every contract, and every decision has to go through a couple layers of people to get approval. Some of these files may only looked at on a weekly or bi-weekly basis etc because the person doing the looking has TOO many files to try to jump back and forth. So they look at any updates on the file in a more scheduled way. You can send in a request for something and it could be 2 weeks before you hear back on it.
Also, next week is a big holiday obviously. That means alot of people that may be needed might not be around so trying to rush anything right around thanksgiving is a lost cause. At best, you may still be able to close by the end of the month (that is unlikley but physically possible if all parties push). Your lender may be willing to push hard to get it done this month as they always want to get as many loans closed by the end of the month for their own benefit. That does not mean that the seller's bank will be in the same rush. That said, sometimes they are willing to rush things for the same reason (to get the property off their books before the next round of bills on it comes due...)
In any case, the bottom line is that you can not have a full underwriting approval and clear to close prior to even having an accepted offer. What you have is an underwriter saying that they have all docs that they need and see no problem with an approval, giving you a underwriter based pre-approval, and having the closing paperwork ready to roll waiting on an actual accepted offer. Unfortunately that does nothing to speed up the process from the seller or the seller's bank.
