Big picture, it's possible in certain instances that you could make money on those seconds, but it will be a long haul, require up front investments in law suits against the borrowers, and require those borrowers to recover enough from their foreclosure to have sufficient assets to actually pay you within the time allowed to collect on your judgement.

They are trusting your judgement, character, and expertise to see that the project runs it's course and each party realizes success!

What I understood that EVERY auction must finish with amount greater than judgement amount otherwise plaintiff gets the property, but this is not the case I am seeing.

That you are looking at, or your loan officer is looking at, where they stand in the realm of financing.Do they have a BK, FC, judgement, tax lien..did something happen 4 years ago and they are fine now, but there are still some old items that keep reappearing?

If a man takes out a debt he should repay that debt, but the relationship is clouding their judgement.

Get the judgement anyway because it will prevent them from being able to rent from anyone else who performs due diligence.

You as a landlord have more flexibility and can make a better judgement call. 

If it's a number close to $5000 I would recommend still pursuing small claims, getting a judgement and then filing a lien against the lease signer(s).Now, if it's an amount considerably over $5000 (open to interpretation/one's opinion) and you're fine with spending the money then the lawyer route is the way to go though I would ask the lawyer about his/her cost of putting a lien on the tenant(s).Be sure to ask what the collection lawyers success% is in getting the money, his/her fees, if they can attempt to collect without a judgement, etc. 

I haven't had much luck getting bites from my posts on BP because they weren't personal enough and, judging from your post history, there isn't much to go off of in order to make a judgement decision on a person :)Face-to-face is always better because you can put your best foot forward when making an impression.

I wouldn’t make sweeping judgements about a bad exception.