My short term goals are to make money via Speculation and my 5 year long term goal is to have many rental properties for steady income for my parents and siblings, my original approach was to start off with SFHs, recycle the profits to buy additional SFHs to fund the rental investments later down the road.

In the nutshell, I am getting lots of leads that I don't use, so I am looking for ways to recycle them.

The Country needs people like us to re-cycle the real estate.

I actually like the recycled chopstick idea and was bummed when nobody made an offer.Too bad about the guitar guy.

The foreclosure process will vary from state to state.File is transferred to the lender or servicers BANKRUPTCY department upon filing unless it is a smaller bank.The smaller banks generally have many things rolled into one department as they do not have the default volume to justify separate departments.3 ways to dismiss in BK.The filer motions to dismiss the case.The trustee motions to dismiss the case for non-payment of the BK plan.The creditor motions for a "relief from stay" for their asset.In other words if they borrower is making the BK payment but not the regular mortgage payment the bank can ask for the asset to be pulled out of the stay.This way the bank starts to foreclose again.How a bank views the foreclosure process will depend on time lines and process for that state.From my experience banks do not like short sales while in BK as that can be viewed by the court as a collection activity against the borrower.My experience also shows that sellers are motivated to do something up until filing BK.After filing BK they get a sigh of relief for awhile.If you live in a property as your personal residence and filed BK you sure don't want to sell it.You want to milk the BK for all it's worth.The credit is usually trashed to because for many BK is a last resort after failed loan mods and many other avenues haven't worked out.

This "experience" is one reason stores like Starbucks have people shelling out $5 a cup for lousy coffee and milk - you simply cannot beat the casual, yet classy, atmosphere of their lounge-type stores, with the easy-listening jazz playing over the speakers, your poets and would-be screenwriters banging out their next masterpiece on their laptop computers, and Realtors or notaries in the corner signing offers and loan docs.

I recall seeing a graph of the RE cycles of the last 60 years or so and iirc all downturns began after the market had recovered and exceeded previous highs.

In 2nd position, with no equity, with an undesirable property, it could be a lost cause to milk it much further to recoup losses. 

Owned my mortgage company and capital company around 25 years.Give me a reason to count the dollar volume pushed across my desk over the years, you do realize that such amounts are from the same dollar recycled over and over. 

You can walk into a grocery store, ask for the manager, say you want 1G milk for $0.42.