There are short sales in there everywhere, everything's for sale and anything under contract is usually $100k or more below what the seller paid for the property.

Buy in an area of the city where people are upwardly mobile so they will leave in a couple years as they have high paid tech jobs. 

But still want paid the money promised & made huge mistakes with an insurance claim I had going on a property.

If the non-signing spouse agreed to the easement and received and accepted the consideration paid, it very well may be valid as to them. 

Almost impossible to do for someone being paid W-2.

They paid 8.15 BTC for their $800 rent. 

And who would want paid in Bitcoin if they got their pay on Friday and it was worth 20% less on Monday because some Bitcoin miner in China had a security breach driving down the value of Bitcoin?  

My down payment will be just as much as he still owes on the property, some small expenses, and maybe some prepaid taxes.

You either have to have paid off properties, own properties in high appreciation locations that you have owned for 10-ish years, or several short term rentals that you self manage (which is a bit of a job in and of itself). 

He has paid rent weekly via auto-deposit into my account for 24 months.