I wish you all the best.

I made offers of several properties, waited and monitored the countdown for the live auction to begin which never actually happened. 

@Shawn NofzigerHi Shawn,I came across your post and while I am a long way from Lansing, I work with a ton of new and aspiring investors and the challenges they have getting from idea to action. 

I found this deal on Zillow I didn't even try to negotiate the deal to bring the price lower.

That teaches the occupants that they aren't 100% responsible for cleaning up after themselves.

We typically look for decent properties that are likely at the bottom of some bigger investor's portfolio.

@James @James Mays yes I do and it's exactly the same.Good Investing...

My thinking is this leaves me with two paths: A) Best case is I pick up the foreclosure for $1M, immediately list it for sale at $1.6M or more and hopefully sell for a > $500K pretax profit. 

We are actually doing the remodels, so we are the end buyer.

If you read my previous post, I emphasized the importance of showing up for the right keywords.