If the bank is smaller in size I would even try to call their corporate office and track down a contact that handles the REO department.  

Over all would this house serve you better as a buy and hold, rent it, refinance it , then repeat in the future?

The value add could be a mismanaged property, a property plagued by vacancy (marketing deficiency) a property that can be broken down into smaller units hence growing NOI, etc.A move in this direction would serve multiple purposes:a) Buy a deal you could generate greater NOI than a similar 'straight' leased investment.b) Allow you to gain some experience managing and marketing CRE space.c) Provide you with a track record in commercial which conventional CRE lenders look towards when loaning on CRE.

Deal size also matters. 

I was directed to a public link which I had already checked out long time ago, which only lists properties that will have been tax defaulted for 5 or more years as of this July 1, 2015 or delinquent for 3+ years as of July 1, 2011, which obviously do not serve my purpose.

We have thought of purchasing your property because we are very happy with the size of it as a starter home, and can see our family staying here for many years to come.Finally we want you to take into consideration that we will continue to make our payment of 725 for the remaining 35 thousand dollars that we will owe, which would be paid off in less then five years.

Hopefully it’ll bring some of the on campus students to downtown also to help business.Across from the funeral home in downtown is a pretty decent size abandoned lot that I was looking into purchasing, after some research I found out it was actually purchased by the city a few months prior to me looking, so there’s plans in the works.Now with regard to Pontiac...

If the tenant has not abandoned the property and is not paying rent, serve notice to "Pay Rent or Quit" immediately.

You will need a devoted checking account to serve your LLC and properties and you will need to pay taxes on the property from that account.No worries about fraud, there is nothing fraudualnt about an of it, it's only changes to the structure of things not hiding anything in any way.

And generally, the smaller the community, the more the hoa dislikes rental units, even though we serve a valuable purpose in the community.