A review of your offering documents makes clear that investor money is considered game for any purpose.

Education is key in real estate investing, and combining different resources can be very beneficial.

I would be sure to document the slow progress and continue to monitor for the next week, but if it is the same by the end of this week I would have 2-3 quotes from other contractors ready to finish the job. 

I thought about this when I was getting all my documents together for this years taxes.Impact cost basis, how may I ask? 

For example, are there specific documents or information I should prepare, or would identifying a target property first be more beneficial?

And the fact that your post had at least three votes for it when I posted this shows that there are lots of other people who would probably be losing in PA under those same assumptions that just happen to be FALSE in Pennsylvania.Pennsylvania has some rather complicated rules when it comes to tax sales; the particular type of sale that the OP purchased at is one that does not divest any liens; it simply changes the party that is the owner, with the new owner taking title subject to all liens and encumbrances of record.With tax sales, the buyer must be aware of all the local rules under which the tax sale is being conducted, because the rules vary all over the place.Now, what the OP seems to have failed to do in his research was to cross index the recordings at the county recorder; the "missed" mortgage would have showed up on a search by parcel number if that sort of cross check was done (and assuming all indexed documents at the recorder are properly indexed of course - I have seen mistakes made attaching a document to the wrong parcel).

thanks Greg, yeah in NJ I pay $50 for LLC creation and 100 for boilerplate operating agreement for each of my properties to get an LLC set up online in 5 minutes and spits out the same documents  vs. $1500 for a lawyer so its just common sense to not use a lawyer and throw the $ away.     

What documents do they require, what credit scores do they allow, how do they verify previous rental history, etc.?

To minimize taxes, ensure all deductible expenses—such as materials, labor, and loan interest—are properly documented.

Those will be hard to show in documents for 1031 exchange as well.