A title search should uncover anything like this. 

It's so nice to hear success stories like this.

but it's the whole time value of $ thing so nice to get an interest free loan from the government.and any capital improvements are depreciated over the life of the product. so a $4k roof replacement means you will "spread out" that expense over 20-30 years so your profits will be larger during that time. 

I know that finding reliable contractors and uncovering potential issues with rentals will be a bit of an uphill battle for me at first so I plan to not be too overzealous. :)

@John KutrzebaBe careful with some areas of Allentown, some areas not so nice.

When I spoke to the Title Company about the unpaid balance of the levy they told me they could not help me out and very rudely dismissed my inquiry (maybe because I discovered that they did not do a good job of uncovering all liens or levies due to previous owner's delinquencies).

I can’t promise I will use them because my intent is more tailored to uncover the facts around what happened here. 

The best way to find a good deal when starting out is to uncover it yourself.

A scoring model can give or take points away, or decline altogether, depending on the information uncovered in background checks.

We ask for a previous job and previous addresses to get to at least 5 years of residency, but credit report should help ferret both of those out, although the info is sometimes cryptic, so nice to have a cross reference.