I was told it was done just for preventative maintenance early on as the area had had some settling issues in the past with other properties.

At the end of the day, if it all works out, there will be no additional income shown on your tax return, you'll only be reporting the transaction for informational purposes and to prevent a notice.

The problem of course is that we already paid off the county so I'm not sure what would prevent MDH from simply redeeming the lien and then we're in the same position. 

I think it's a shame that fear of litigation often prevents consumers from sharing information with each other.

We just had a giant lawsuit that showed how difficult it was to negotiate the fees, and the steps realtors took to prevent buyers from easily doing so.

These are players like invitation homes, american homes 4 rent, some even bigger institutional players like key points.

Best way to prevent: select better tenants...yes that is not always the case but it helps.$2.5K additional lost rent due to 4 month instead of 2 month property turnLoss rent on Small Multi-Family properties minimal unless you had to evict.  

A while ago, there was an agent who prevented me from buying a crappy deal.

We have several loans with NASB which is a big player in this space as well as 2 'HELOC' type of loans from a Private Lender at 80% LTV on a couple of properties that we owned free and clear in our retirement accounts, and used that to put down payments on new properties using commercial non-recourse loans.

Please note: some mortgages may have language that prevents this or requires additional hoops to jump through, I would suggest you contact your lender and understand each of the mortgages you have as to where they stand on ownership transfer.