These forums are filled with great advice and the occasional skirmish.

The guy's current home may be considered involuntary confinement, sounds like this could be an occasional place he visits.

There's 100's of people on BP that hate the idea of giving up 10%, want to manage themselves, are happy to do it remotely, don't mind the occasional call from a tenant, etc. 

Since your primary motivation here seems to be a flip/sale in short order and in the same tax period I'm not sure the 1031 would work for you.If your model was to buy at tax sale and fix and then rent (like your plan B) then occasionally a 1031would be appropriate. 

Hey all, occasional poster and frequent reader here! 

When we were doing single family investments, we'd pack up 4-6 properties in a tranche and finance at one time together, so some were low LTV, some higher, and occasionally some over 100%... when we had separate D-T for each.

They don't have to be in your local area, but they need to have done a bunch and need to have systems in place that allow them to teach you by occasional in person visits, by phone, by text, by email, and by skype.In my opinion, you are MUCH better off teaming up with someone who knows what they are doing than you are paying for a one year guru program, for a couple of reasons:1) The cost - I am told these TV personality programs run from $30,000 to $75,000 with little or no hand holding2) They deplete your money, which prevents you from actually investing,  And that substantially slows you down, with the end result of discouraging most people.

(Occasionally you hear of sellers approaching the highest bidder to make a deal after the auction, but only if the bid was nearly at the reserve anyway.)You also have to watch for shill bidding on those sites.

Areas that I look at occasionally but have avoided so far include the fourplexes off State and 56th and the long line of duplexes on State and 63rd Terrace.  

I also do the occasional flip.