You do indeed have some unique facts and circumstances, but the IRC has an opinion on them.If a residence converted to rental property is later sold at a gain, the basis in the converted property is the original cost or other basis plus amounts paid for capital improvements, less any depreciation taken. 

Our situation and experiences may be unique to us but here are my takeaways:1) Even though it's called Fiverr, everything costs a lot more than $5.

We have a unique situation we are looking for advice on.

Ask around, I cant believe my company would be unique in this area?

But I don't think as many of them are homeowners as were before the bubble burst.So while you have a unique perspective on foreclosures given your job, I just don't see any of the obvious red flags for a massive wave of defaults that existed before.As long as lending stays common sensical and as long as nothing else were to significantly disrupt the jobs market, I don't see any way the housing market could take that kind of hit - at least not at the national level.In any given market, I would always think there is the chance that something occurs (i.e. loss of oil jobs, etc) to disrupt the market.  

Every property (vacant) is unique and will not have a direct comparison.

One other thing to be aware of - each of those areas you listed is going to have it's own unique features and specific buyer, so your finish out will need to reflect that.

Is this a unique case or fairly common in the industry?

It's entire episode devoted to a unique way to source deal flow from brokers.  

We've worked with may clients who will move out of a primary residence that has more than 500K in gain so they can combine sec 121 and 1031 to make all of the gain tax free or tax deferred.We've also have numbers of clients take advantage of the 1301 - 121 conversion to ultimately turn part of the tax deferred gain into tax free.Your situation is somewhat unique in that you're wanting to combine both of those strategies and take the 121 pro-ration tax free and 1031 the other pro-rated gain.