Laurence,I am so sorry to hear about your situation, always wise to conduct some due diligence on your part prior to hiring any third party for anything you do.I m not sure what state your property is located, but may be a good idea to check with thats states Depart of Real Estate, Real estate Council or Depart of Business and Regulation to see if they have a Real estate Recovery fund, this is set up for situations such as yoursGood luck

Even though I saw some patterns, I was too broke trying to survive to really take advantage of the crashes or recoveries. 

The recovery along the gulf coast with Katrina could provide lessons as many smaller burgs were forced to decide if it was worth rebuilding again.  

They want the safety of the market today in the recovery but want the returns that came with the risk of the past (unrealistic).Those properties might be one in a 1,000 in the current market.As a broker and investor I want to maximum my time and return on investment.

I've done student rentals in SFH land, and a turnover means a pretty decent rehab at a non-party college known for how little the students do outside of coursework (the athletics program is a running joke, the majority of the student body is actively hostile towards frats, etc).

There's still room for more recovery.

So many articles have the headline "when will housing recover". I

It's legalese, but a default judgement without actual physical service will only give you an in rem recovery option i.e. the right to evict, not recover money damages.You might have to hire an actual process server to get that good service on her in order to get a judge to grant a garnishment or some other recovery method.

But with prices still relatively low, with a significant increase in drilling activity here, would we even give oil prices a chance to recover? I

There are many "Recovery" houses that will bring in failed addicts from outside.