Where will foot3x gonna live?

[Lamplighter]

...
Well, he dead. A bank is selling it, a short sale that would also take months.

Go talk with the REO (real estate owned) dept of the bank that is handling the property.
Things have changed greatly in what banks are doing now with short sales.
If the house is worth anything at all, banks are allowing owners/renters
to remain in the house for the time it will take to process the mortgage paperwork.
Currently, this is amounting to 2-3 years.

The banks now are only concerned about the property not being savaged or illegally inhabited.
There are huge sums of $, foreign and domestic, coming into play
where investor-corporations are offering to buy several
hundreds properties in a bundle or single transaction.
They must hold them for the 2-3 years before they can sell them again.
A realtor recently told me they expect another flood of properties
on the market when that time period is up. But in the meantime
they will be used as rentals.

If you can show that you can/will maintain the property, I suspect
you could make an offer the bank's REO department could find a
way to accept it... or at least give you an extension and/or quick answer.
You might even live rent-free during that time.