The mortgages should be extinguished by by the tax sale as all interested parties are to be notified prior to tax sale.

Look at the bottom third of this page: https://vsb.org/soyoure18/groups/SoYouRe18/landlord_tenant.a...2.

if a brand new investor is working with a private money lender, it's almost like one party is taking advantage of the other (not saying it's intentional)

To make it easier on both parties, I would simply make the introduction and if they go under contract I will set up a referral fee with the property owner to pay me for the introduction. 

The three properties referenced above: a) one turns into a mid-term allowing me to get higher than normal rents that cover everything; b) one turns into a short term; c) the third I focus on getting the highest dollar with short fall of may $100 per month and planning to raise rents in the next few years to cover that eventually.Problems: I have been a long time airbnb user.

The role of a PM is to be your partner in managing your property, good partners communicate to each other constantly & never leave the other party in the dark.

It is best to establish a 3rd party servicing company to oversee these payments as you do not want to send this money directly to the seller as they may not actually make the payment and then you could see your house foreclosed on by the lender.

At a technical level you have two paths, either 1) combining the bottom and ground floor units into a larger unit as you suggested above or 2) create a third legal unit.

The best part is they are buying these homes with a little as 5% down, they are being taught how to self manage,  and are given the systems to be on auto pilot with out having to hire PM.  

No 1 person, party, group or anything can take credit for that, it was people being decent people, doing the best they could vs this insane political-everything obsession tribalism today!