And if you take the deed before you negotiate a discount with the lender for the UPB, can't you put yourself in "squirm worthy" amounts of liability, speculating and hoping that there is a discount?

This is purely speculative, but I imagine to generate a reliable pipeline of leads in a market like Austin using only a generic mailer, the amount of mail one would need to send is likely on several orders of magnitude greater than 500.

I would speculate that most attorneys would not have an immediate answer to the question also.

If a seller is unaware of the plans, they are more likely to sell at the current market value than to hold out for any speculative price.

No idea, just speculating

I have seen some of Mark's promotions, looks like plain old land speculation, another news flash, you can get stuck with raw land for years, it is not a liquid asset and is less marketable than a residential property. :)

All the negative commentary about Allens approach is based on supposition when all he stated was that he's trying to get in touch with the owner.

I've used list source and then bought into the Kent clothier vacant property search software.Mostly all of my time has been speculative, trying to find a niche and a proper market for my time, abilities and goals.I'll let you know when something works :)

Stick to tried and true formulas and strategies and allow the speculators to weed themselves out through attrition.  

I saw a lot of development and speculative investing back in 2007.