Good luck in your new venture!

I started and sold a few companies, and get paid from a few ventures now.

Since they stand to lose the property without any compensation, why wouldn't they consider selling and getting some cash in the process ...

The banks are still informed that they are going to potentially lose their interest in the property and they can pay off the lien to keep it, but the state/county/city needs to be able to collect the property taxes and this is the best way for them to do that.It is in the best interest of the public for tax liens to be superior to mortgage liens.

What I meant with REO brokers is they are not going to sit and secure a crap property over and over with the low commission they are making in a high crime rate area.They get paid a set commission regardless of the price.So whether it stays secure is not a real concern to them.If they sell a 10k house but make 10% which is 1k the condition doesn't matter to most of them.If a 200k house gets trashed where you make 6k on 3% commission or 3k on where the house gets trashed and sells for 125k the broker would stand to lose a bunch of money in that case on the sale.You could argue the broker stands to lose money by losing other listings from the bank in more sales but I don't know many brokers that do more than drop a sign with these types of properties.

You have nothing to lose.

I'm really losing faith in being investor.

I know that I would lose my homestead exemption, but I would be able to lower my tax liabilities because of depreciation and could show more income from rent proceeds.

So instead of being out of work, now you're out of work and losing money....

And there may be far more building code issues than what I've mentioned.Lastly, to install a bath within the structure of an existing building, some part of the building will "lose" some space that will be taken by the bathroom.