It seems like it doesnt matter what city you live in...the news available to that city's inhabitants is always going to be uplifting and attractive...otherwise the morale as a whole would go down and who would invest?

If you look at this from the point of view of morality you're not helping them at all by letting them stay in this property.

This paperwork (signed deed and agreement for sale, etc.) will not be for "public consumption", unless made public out of necessity.Plus, you have a creative way of making this owner financing deal become "more of a regular deal" if needed in the future!

However, IMO you have a moral obligation to work with your tenant/buyer and try to get them in shape to refinance at some point, possibly a LOT more involvement than you wanted.Just be careful not to generalize on an area as a "high crime, low income" area.

The same people who would say you have a duty to be moral and meet your financial obligations will accept, all day long, that "businsses" default on their bad investements as a matter of cutting losses and that's OK.

If through a listing broker it will depend on what the listing broker entered on the MLS and MLS rules.In Georgia for instance on FMLS if as a broker you screw up and enter commission wrong,mistake things etc. you can be on the hook for the commission or lose access to the MLS.MLS's are sometimes controlled by REALTOR associations and other times are private entities that are non-profits or for-profit organizations.Also the brokers/agents involved it would matter if they were REALTORS or not.Generally your state's real estate commission does not handle commission disputes.They only care about license laws.The agent can argue procuring cause with the other agent but it should not stop your sale.Simply you would close and get your proceeds and the commission in question would be froze until a solution was given and signed in writing or a court order.There are so many variables to this and it is state specific.Procuring cause is a chain of events leading up to a sale of a property.If the chain is broken generally the broker/agents is not due a commission.The moral of the whole story is the buyers agent needs to learn how to protect themselves in the future.I am not going to court to get my agents commission when I only charge them a 300 flat fee as a broker.No legal advice

I am not making a moral case out of this either as I would be thrilled if my low income neighborhood became gentrified.

As a result, this could be a near term boom for the local real estate market because of the investment and consumption dollars being spent at the resort.

Instead of attempting to keep a borrower on the constant edge of failure and earning less, it's actually more profitable in the long run to advance your borrower more like a partner than a servant.Many borrowers also assume they can't get conventional financing, while I know some HMLs point them in the right direction, I'm sure there are just as many who would allow that borrower to continue thinking that the HML is his only hope.With that, if HMLs were to address a better standard of ethical and moral conduct thier public standing would certainly improve, being known as a specialty lender than a "hard money" loan shark.

In a depression the GDP falls, it is the slowing of the consumption function or products and services being consumed less than an economy in balance.