We paid cash for property at 22k, put some work and money into it, and it's been valued by the auditor at around 45k before improvements (however hasn't been officially appraised).

If you are still doing repairs and an auditor notices you could lose time being depreciated...

A particular absentee owner who is delinquent on his taxes has no forwarding address listed on the auditor's website.  

In fact, two different IRS auditors might make different determinations!

@Elizabeth R.Requesting and obtaining a signed W-9 from all independent contractors, and issuing 1099-MISCs if required is the extent of your obligation as it relates to federal income taxes.You have no obligation to be detective/auditor/investigator on behalf of the IRS, and the contractor has no obligation to play along.

But flipping these properties may be a problem.I also talked to the Weber county auditor about the process.  

I have a commercial property owned by one LLC & rented out space to my other 'management' LLC at a nominal rate.The IRS auditor didn't agree..but they did allow me to take a full office deduction with a pro rata treatment of expenses etc.The latter proved to be a much better (creative) deduction.

Yeah, yeah, most people here will tell you that most banks won't actually go through with it, and that they won't check the county auditors site, but you will change the insurance policy into the LLC (which is critical) and at that point the bank will know, cause the insurance company will send a copy of the policy to the lender. 

You can depreciate the rental side using a standard 27.5 yr. depreciation schedule, obviously subtracting the land value, which you can find on the county auditor site.

Actually, I'm a fiscal conservative, very much so, as to waste and abuse (after all I'm an old auditor).