One of the more infamous skits depicts a scene of a small tiny lap dog (I'm thinking that's you) barking at an elephant (that's Darren).  

Definitely cannot trust the hype and must send out third-party inspectors.Quality over quantity applies very well here.

I believe some of the guests on the podcast have talked about buying large quantities of homes, but if I recall correctly, they were all units in a living community.  

Maybe from a tiny local lender but never from larger lenders.

I realize that risk and personal circumstance comes into play here, but I'm just curious about the reasons of using one particular strategy vs. another, and in what quantities they can be combined.

We were considering making updates to the master bathroom that still has the original layout from 40 years ago when the home was first built (its TINY!

In other states the lien holder can just foreclose assuming you can fund the cost to force a foreclosure.Liens are tiny relatively speaking.

So the strategy seems to be buying 100 liens at low or no interest and maybe a tiny fraction don't get redeemed and you have a huge windfall by acquiring the property. 

(Yes, I know that REI is a job, at least until you are a fully automated big dog, and I know that I'll be starting off with tiny streams... but where do you think the Amazon and the Mississippi start?

The tile itself was inexpensive (sorry, I don't remember the per sf cost at the moment, but I can say that we went to a discount tile retailer for bathroom tile, and great small quantity closeouts were available for huge discounts (like way cheaper than home depot), and we used home depot 12x24 tile for the kitchen floor for a few hundred bucks).The other big expense would have been the roof, but we were able to leave that one alone (thank God!).