This information will also help you to quickly "ballpark" an ARV on the flyIs there a mortgage and/or taxes outstanding?

For all those wondering, here is the relevant portion of Fannie Mae guidelines B3-6-05:"For all student loans, whether deferred, in forbearance, or in repayment (not deferred), the lender must use the greater of the following to determine the monthly payment to be used as the borrower’s recurring monthly debt obligation: 1% of the outstanding balance; orthe actual documented payment (documented in the credit report, in documentation obtained from the student loan lender, or in documentation supplied by the borrower).If the payment currently being made cannot be documented or verified, 1% of the outstanding balance must be used.Exception: If the actual documented payment is less than 1% of the outstanding balance and it will fully amortize the loan with no payment adjustments, the lender may use the lower, fully-amortizing monthly payment to qualify the borrower."

Why are they so damn many condos still being built??

The title search reflected a very old (2010) HOA lien on the unit in the records - the HOA has acknowledged that no payments are outstanding and were paid off in 2010 itself.

Also, damn, kids playing with fire in a rental property scares me too!

Finally as Matthew mentions make sure that there are no outstanding or impending liabilities to the business.Highly recommend that you work with knowledgeable and qualified professional who understand the details about mergers and acquisitions to best guide you through the process.

He does outstanding work and will shoot straight.

., and the onus would then be on the seller to settle any outstanding liens at closing (assuming they are less than the purchase price, they could come out of the seller's proceeds on the settlement statement and be paid by the title company).

@Nick Apada There is no real way to know what the outstanding hoa debt is prior to bidding, unless you can get them to give you a ballpark, which they are not supposed to do, but sometimes will.  

You need to begin formulating what really is the advantage of an amount of work, because just the work won't be enough, there has to be a savings to the contractor such as less time spent wasted chasing bids he won't get, things like that, you need to actually save this contractor real money to see a discount, volume is really not going to do it, and I can't stress enough promises of volume are worth even less.Then there is the issue of timing, you're an investor so you're going to be always pressing for right now, any contractor worth a damn is always busy but I'm guessing you're probably going to figure that your 'volume' is going to also mean the contractor should respect your authoratay and be ready to jump when you have the next one.