First telling thing is verbatim copy in the letter.. so it does not take long to realize these are not private folks looking to help these poor people out.. and there was all sorts of sob stories.. it seemed that everyone in the foreclosure rescue business had indeed been in foreclosure their self and knew exactly what this poor couple was going through.. some would come with a biblical bent. etc etc.I suspect not much has changed since the early to  middle 2000's in this regard other than the information is that much more available to the mass's and those trained on BP to do direct mail.Realtors mortgage lenders they all sent paper to the homes.I had a team of 6  3 couples we did not send any letters we door knocked 14 days and 5 days before the sale our specialty was curing 1 to 3 days before the sale... this is when the owners get motivated.prior to that time they are still thinking uncle George is going to rescue them or they will just sell the boat.

If the weather was warm and dry during the few days you were gone, maybe they thought they were rescuing them rather than stealing them.  

Having been in the foreclosure rescues business for about 20 years ( before the anti skimming laws made it all but illegal in our area).people that are in foreclosure will revert at an alarming rate..

Suddenly my crappy life situation (terminated from Dallas Fire-Rescue 09/15 for not passing Paramedic school) had some light pointing towards one of my life's goals.  

In that case you may be able to still buy it from them after the fact and rescue them from their own stupidity.

But to turn around and claim that big insurance companies are saints that will bring the full resources available to them to your rescue, I find simply mind boggling.

I'm going to give the BP readers some credit, I don't think they need to be rescued from this post. 

Crowd funding to the rescue.

If this helps (I've had birds, including finches, canaries, a sun conure, a blue and gold macaw and currently have a rescued african grey), Eclectus tend to be less loud than other parrots (that sun conure was great for a hearing impaired person!)

Basically, to get a property before it goes to foreclosure auction, you need to rescue it from foreclosure by buying it from the owner when it is in pre-foreclosure (or before).