There can be so many variations and reasons...I am a newbie so other posts are experienced and more accurate with their warnings...set your limits and stick to it for your own personal sanity...and safety...!

So I have a basement that used to get water issues, and I FINALLY got that taken completely taken care of after two years of trial and error (and money).  

There is far more variation in state LLC laws when compared to corporation or partnership laws of any given state.

In fact if it goes to trial by jury the plaintiff could be awarded some pretty hefty punitive damages at the end of the day.

When they, that is the seller accepts your "trial offer" do your home work, call the pros in that area to give you an opinion of value.If there is equity potential, great, if not, make a lower offer, if they don't accept it - move on.If you think there is about $10,000 or more potential profit -  now you need to work to realaize that cash - get it assigned as fast as possible.First you need to have a proper contract that gives you the right of possession, right to assign and to market by private treaty or public auction.

You might also look at Homelight.com and Upnest.com, which are pursuing variations on what you've described.Most of the real estate industry is at least 10 years behind corporate/B2B sales in terms of using technology for lead gen and funnel management, and even if there's interesting stuff already out there from Zillow, etc., you should take that as a sign that there's already a market, and given the overall size of the opportunity, there's plenty of room for others to play. 

For some reason, probably due to negotiations in the bankruptcy proceedings, the mortgagee sent my tenant an offer for trial payments on a loan mod being done under the Home Affordable Modification Program. 

Also I did a dummy trial of of a flip and I saw on the right side it showed expenses: exterior, interior - is there away you can manage that and put numbers in there?  

(any niche almost) find a rockstar internet marketer able to see what people type in Google then rank mega sites with all variations of search phrases + all cities within X miles and show up for 20,000 first page results...that'll dominate. 

There isn't a standard, but the majority of fees in Florida are 6%. 3% to the listing agent, 3% to the selling agent, or some variation of that.