Most of the bigger property owner associations in CA have deep pockets, and are taking this to the higher levels.

Often you are getting a pretty sizeable discount for your efforts, resulting in both captured equity and cashflow.The best ugly properties go quickly, so when I was looking, I got in the habit of searching daily.  

The owner has taken it off market and I'm just trying to explore my options of selling it off market for a deeply discounted price.  

Ultimately you will have to sell your house at a discount. 

We would need to go into a very deep, very bad recession that is housing related for that to happen however so I would not hope for that. 

(I almost threw something at my monitor, but took a deep breath and realized my wife would be very upset if I broke another one :)They are not doing anything illegal, they are just CRE Remoras, who exploit less experienced investors, and there are hundreds like them.

 @Puneet Mahi as others have stated, I would do a deep dive on the markets inside each state to determine where you could have an advantage AND where your family would like to live.

However the owner comes from corporate world and they started out doing deep dives into markets and moving Hedgefund type portfolios between large investors.. they then decided to offer there service to smaller turnkey type and one offs..

So if the property is not a value-add or steeply discounted I would not do this. 

There are accountants who say that applies to the opportunity to discount sale and/or basis shift to further lower the tax bill.