(Please bare with my me as I'm a total newbie and just familiarizing myself with the terms.)

Well That would the bare minimum . 

Always late, barely scrapes by.

some thing along those lines.. and that was in the 60s and 70s.. most of the reason for these is the property would not perc  or water system was not adequate at the time for a full build out of the subdivision.. but these things have come before .. now people dont really buy bare land that much like they used to .. these mid west low value rentals have taken over for the specualted land plays. 

And then you are simply competing on price, since you have nothing unique about your propertySpend $30 more and paint a wall a bold color, or $20 dollars on a quart of paint and make the front door pink.  

Without the owner physically there, the employees started doing the bare minimum and drove away several good tenants before I fired them.  

There is the person who barely got by with thier first rental they over payed for with a broken  pipe and someone cooking meth in thier house that cost them 25k thier first year on a 110k house.It’s ok not to be perfect , or find the greatest deal.

We don't see much appreciation, but in the last recession, we barely saw dips in property values.

b) are the title reports ordered by different title companies different???

The taxes for 2015 are delinquent, and the seller has a 35k equity loan against the property that she can barely make payments on as she lives off of social security.