You absolutely need to hire an electrician to hard wire the heaters into the building wiring mount them along the baseeboards and make sure your existing wiring can safely handle the load.

My initial plan I'd to have a property management company handle it since I am out of the country.

Check with your QI as I'd have to imagine they handle this specific question quite frequently.

Maybe i'm wrong as I am a newbie but I truly feel giving the lead the opportunity to speak freely to a voicemail and simply asking for their reason for calling they will open up and spill their reason for selling which then will provide me with some great info that will make the call smoother and give me a heads up on how to handle this particular lead.

I like to plan for the future, and am trying to get a handle for the markets as a whole and for the area of Charlotte in particular.Thanks,James

You should be able to recoup the costs through your own market activity (plus some), you'll gain plenty of useful knowledge you didn't know you needed to know and as a mechanical engineer I'm certain you can handle the 60 hours of coursework and exam.

I'm thinking of offering $61K which would leave me with enough money to handle the repairs.Conversely if I flipped it it would need more like $30K in repairs and probably sell for $125.

Just because they have a season (or life) of financial struggle doesn't mean they can't handle other life affairs responsibly. 

It wasn't pleasant, but I think I handled it the best way possible. 

i hear ya, ron. i bought on house from hubzu, never again. we ended up not buying the place from them after all. even my attorney here clearly stated to me that if i buy another house from hubzu, that, in his words, " find another attorney to handle it for you". i will never deal with them again