This is time consuming and I'd like to know who others are using for this effort.

Has the seller received any notice of foreclosure, if so you need to head the other way if you can't buy it, this is full of new foreclosure landmines, if no notice has been given then you can proceed on the creative side.If you are acting as an investor, you can do an installment contract, as a real estate dealer selling to a consumer, buyer tenant, you'll have federal laws to comply with, pretty hard to do now.However, I'm more concerned with, what appears to be, the  intent of avoiding the mortgage requirements.

Just keying that many entries would consume days, maybe a week even, every single month. 

My story -As an active real estate agent on both commercial and residential fronts dealing with retail consumers and investors.

No and I've only thought of it once and that was because a buildable lot in Raintree Country Club (arboretum area) came up...but I still didn't do it.It's too eexpensive, takes too long and way too time consuming especially for an investor and LAND PRICES in any area you should be investing in would be insanely priced.I think its great you are thinking of all options.

Yes, speak with a Consumer Protection attorney.

Filtering the turds from the gold is the time consuming part but we keep the pipeline full to filter out the turds.

However, its more time consuming than purchasing a list (Queens county clerks office has a computer system for Lis Pendens that looks like it hasn't been updated since the 90's). 

@Michael Lang,Indeed - your thread title was well chosen.The entrepreneurial mindset differs quite radically from the consumer mindset.The consumer mind says, "How much does it cost?"

Yes this is time consuming but you want to become efficient with it.