I grew up around housing as my dad is a general contractor turned energy auditor, my mom worked in low-income housing, and my uncles and grandfather are developers and landlords as well.

@Keith A, I will second the response @Brian Kelsch gave you; however, I will mention the listed property rules.If you are audited, be prepared for the auditor to ask you to prove that you had more than one.

(but its not deductible anyway)I've actually never had an auditor question that.

Fail to pay the taxes and you would get the criminal field auditors involved with your case were you successful with that strategy.

Those that are clearly in the bizz need to be compliant.I appreciate your input and agree that no one wants the auditors breathing down your neck..

It's in extremely rough condition, but could be a decent cash-flow property if done correctly.The problem as I see it that the property currently has 4300 in back taxes.The lady selling the property now is listed as the owner on the auditor's website, but says she never transfered the deed into her name and didn't knwo there was back taxes when she bought it, and didn't pay taxes on the property while she attempted to repair it.I'm not sure how this situation goes forward.

If a property appears neglected or vacant as @Ned Carey predicted, I check an online tax lien site, the auditors' site to estimate how much equity they may have, the scheduled sheriff sales site where the plaintiff is a clue to which are probably tax lien sales, and the Clerk of Courts which shows other foreclosure actions, judgments, etc.

5.She is trying to get $50,000 total to try to fix up the reno project plus pay for the expensive repairs on the other properties.6.She would also like to refinance the other properties which may be under commercial loans but deeds are in trust.One is over 12% and others I believe are over 8%.7.Her personal property has a mortgage for $130,000 and is showing about that value on auditors website + corelogic/Zillow.However, they completed gutted and rehabbed their house many moons ago and turned it from a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom church house into 5/6 bedroom 4.5 bath house.I believe theres plenty of equity to be found here but she’s afraid if she gets an appraisal for HELOC either she will waste money and it will come out to what the internet says or the county will reappraise the house and raise her taxes significantly which she can’t afford right now.8.She has a promissory note from a lawyer my stepdad lent $50,000 to some time ago.The note was due for $83,000 balloon in 2011 but he has only paid $5,000 on it.I don’t know the full details of this but she is supposed to send me a copy.Thanks for any help...this is pretty complicated, especially since I don't have the paperword to really lay down the exact details. 

You don't even have to pull them from the recorder, they are on the auditor's site.  

One I have also used that I learned from @Sharon Vornholt (can't get the stupid @ thing to work,) is to use the auditors website to look at recent sales in the area.