I was going to take a cheap pot shot at California liberals in general, but may be some other time..LOL 

Is your property in Cook County?  

I am an Army veteran served 2 years at Ft Campbell as a cook those were some of the best times of my life.

Looking at cook county recorder of deeds webpage gets you maybe 60% information. you need to go much beyond that and only title company that has tools and access to the information can do thorough track research. they can provide peace of mind that whatever you are buying is actually what you think you are buying. 3.City charges and water charges.

Additionally, there was potentially meth cooking happening in the basement from one of the father's tenants.

I bought a property at the sheriff's sale auction in Chicago Cook County.  

The stain on the back is cooking grease.

A good example of why people shouldn't be getting ideas from guru authors selling books, especially old books, but this would have been loan fraud in the 80s too.If you as an investor type, go to a seller and convince them that some method is fine to do and it's not fine, you can be held liable, in fact, if the judge sees you as one with greater knowledge than your seller that will add to your pain and suffering as you were the one that cooked up some scheme and you're the one who caused the damage to the seller.My first post I didn't read the thread, I stopped at the original post.Now, I read some others.

Within 5 years this business has allowed be to Travel to Panama, Mexico, Cook Islands.

Water, gas for heat, gas for cooking, gas for hot water heater, same for electric etc.