Ive been looking primarily in the midwest, mainly cleveland, cincinatti, st lois, memphis, and indaniapolis.

My main question is, can a property be bought before auction if there is a notice of sale posted?

I started out by renting my previous residence and it worked out well mainly because I had built up significant equity before I did it and rates were near 4.0% for primary residences at the time in 2013.

The leak has to be around the headwall where a window dormer meets the main roofline.

well to me if that component was not on your original scope of work and you never touched it  .. this should have been caught at home inspection. 

My boyfriend and I bought a house with a walkout basement (with a bedroom and bathroom), we added a kitchenette, and now we rent out the basement area while living on the main floor.

When I call the finance company I get their main call center who sometimes cannot even find my neighbors property in their system, other times they can.

At the meetup there was a speaker who was talking about his success to financial independent and when he went through his list of rentals he bought over the years it left me with a lot of questions. 1: Most of his rentals he bought in B+ to A area's in the 300-450k range in Florida.2: His numbers just didnt make sense, one deal he posted it showed literally like a +$5/month cashflow only....So afterwards i started to talk to him more and he mentioned that he is not the type that invest in cashflow, he is a equity investor... intrigued me so i asked more questions and basically he went on to explain to me that he buys properties that need a little bit of work, but have built in equity in the deal, but he has 4 main rules he goes by... 1: If the Roof is greater than 10 years, he always puts a reduction in his offer for a replacement roof.2: If the A/C is older than 5 years, he always puts a reduction in his offer for a replacement a/c.3: If the house is older than 30yrs old, he always puts 10-15k reduction in his offer for a water line replacement.4: He refuses to buy houses with pools....Anyways after a bit of talking he explained to me that he buys larger 300-450k houses, because most investors are educated to not buy them, so there is a lot of room to wiggle on the deals due to lack of competition on offers and most people in that price range are easily able to be purchased with a few % out of the deal to skip agent commisions..Example he gave me, he recently bought a 455k deal for 405k, but the ARV 535k, because he talked them down in needing a new roof, and a/c and offered to pay cash instead of going through an agent if he would drop 4% off the price for that... 

however the main point is if for some reason your borrower has a hiccup do you have the funds to step in and cure their first loan. 

The main issue I would have with the number is the Maintenance number.