For example, your contractors or a random guy walking on the sidewalk outside your house, where he slips and hurts himself...

But they are real estate professionals, many with formal research and investigation backgrounds and all with million-dollar pockets, and casual here-today-gone-tomorrow looky-lookies are not going to compete successfully with them.The best advice I've ever heard about spending money at the auction went something like this: if you can't afford to drop the money you've budgeted to spend at the auction in a pile on the sidewalk and burn it right there, if your business model can't survive that, don't bid.Again, I would say a real estate auction is a great place to learn a lot about real estate by studying and watching, but it's not a place to learn by trial-and-error.Best of luck to you.

There is a famous case in San Francisco a few years ago where a local couple bought the HOA property like sidewalks and streets, in an expensive neighborhood.   

@Caleb Heimsoth Single family with a short, one-car driveway and small amount of sidewalk.

Maintenance is on us in MF for the common areas (weeding, trimming, external lighting, hallway cleanliness, carpet cleaning, salting sidewalks, etc.), whereas in SFH I just let my tenants take care of all of that.

But with the above, please make sure you're not that obnoxious next door house whose light comes on anytime someone walks the sidewalk or drives by in the road.

I see them in my neighborhood on telephone poles, sidewalks, etc.

When it comes to the footprint, check with zoning on Setbacks, required landscaping and parking, need for Storm retention ponds, fire hydrants, sidewalks, water/sewer/gas easements,  etc.

He says we need to repair the sidewalks, driveway, paint the aluminum siding, reseed the lawn and do something about the patch of mulch from the tree.

Is there a city main that it connects to at the sidewalk/street, or is it hooked up to a septic system?