It works like this:You and Father agree to price and terms.Down payment (if any) or equity from share of Mom's estateBalance is paid by Purchase Money Note (secured by Trust Deed or mortgage) payable to seller (Dad). 

There was a man named Bob Bruss who used to read 52 new real estate books a year, and then publish his pick of the top ten that year.

I wait till the last notice has been published giving the updated list of properties for the tax sale.

You might want to check out J Scott's book on Estimating Rehab Costs, available from BiggerPockets Publishing (I assume that you've already looked into it, but it's a great reference book on the subject).

The cost payable for the Estimate is typically $10

There are probably corresponding discrepancies in appreciation as wellwww.rate.com publishes the avg $/sq ft for many zip codes, but I’m not sure how accurate it is.

-Are there any utilities that the owner pays, like water or sewer, or is every single last one split and payable by the tenant(s)?

I have read/listened to a lot of books on real estate investing and, quite honestly, the books published by Bigger Pockets are fantastic. 

Have a look at BP's blog where new articles are published every day: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog 4.

I mean that purely from a statistical standpoint and I recently published a blog article about the new roles of an agent in working with buyers and sellers that you might benefit from:  "Why doesn't my agent send me any properties?"