If they talk about how they are suddenly getting money every month from some mysterious benefactor, reply with "WOW!  

That said, I have no idea what "an inspection" by a contractor is so that's a bit of a mystery.  

I just unraveled the mystery of real estate!!

Your Lender will want to see that, rather that all of a sudden you coming up with a mysterious $15k.

Sometimes its better to leave a little mystery and only show a few photos.

(BTW Topanga is another area mysteriously under-priced for some breathtaking ocean view properties, but I think that one is very specific to bad/unsufficient roads)

How they have made it this far in life without it is a mystery but they also could just mean that they don't know it.

Occasionally I will get returned mail with "invalid address" even though the owner address matches the county record.My next step is to use USPS's address verification to see if they will make any corrections to the address so I can re-send it.If that fails I will do a google search for the owner name to find alternate contact methods (linkedin, facebook, maybe an address)And lastly there is a skip tracing service called TLO by TransUnion that I have heard discussed a lot but I haven't tried myself, yet.Why this happens is a mystery to me!

To be fair, I did receive a decent amount of money for the reno but as we opened those "mystery walls" things got pricier.  

@ Joseph M - it was a $400k SFH in Tempe AZ.... so not your typical OOS C- rental....mine was renting $1600 back in 2004...Still tenant don't seem to stay more than 6-9 months , non stop repair request, all repairs at 3x the price.... on and on and on...This is still a mystery to me... when I self managed my rental in SF, tenant stay 3 to 7 years, 1 repair a year if that much....To this date, I did not figure out why OOS rental is non stop issues for me..At any rate, that property, had I hold it, rents $1800 today and about $340k today.... so good decision I did to cut loss... pad on my shoulder ...lol