i would if i were in that situation. so, these smaller dollar houses, the houses with lower loans, just sit. in the mean time, they fall apart. sometimes, and i have bought 2 houses this way, banks will just write the house off. if they figure the house will never bring enough money or they will have far too much money wrapped up in keeping the house for years before they can sell it, they just file a release of lien or release of mortgage on the house with the county and basically write it off their books. then, the previous owner has a free house. most of the time the owners have moved on and have no idea the bank did this because most often, the bank will send the letter to the last know address, which is the house they foreclosed on, and the people have already gone. what you have to do then is first, find the release of lien paperwork at the county. get a copy. find the owner. this part can be hard. what i did was run a check on the persons name to see if they own any houses in the area. chances are, if they moved, they rented a place, but they may actually own another house near by. do what you have to do to find them. look in the white pages if you have to. both of mine were found within 3 miles of the house. in the case you are talking about, it sounds like this guy is dead. ok, did he have any relatives?

And remember that PMI premiums are dead fees just like that upfront fee you pay with option 1.  

He has quit watering the backyard and all of the grass is dead as well as some lilacs. 

He's suggested I'd get maybe $25K for my involvement, but we haven't fleshed out the deal entirely. 

Just like buy and hold RE, flips, etc everyone and their dead uncle is buying.

I guess when you're all 80, you'll know that you'll be dead soon so you won't want to make any long term plans.

Forget taxes, depreciation costs and appreciated values - - every investment has all of these, so they are NOT discriminators for the purchase decision.If you want an indicator for which deals to examine in detail, take the GSI / Price better known as the Cap Rate and higher is more interesting.The kicker is, a better CapRate isn't always a better cash/cash return, because the expenses can be deadly. 

They will be able to tell you if the deal is dead because there is no way the property can ever legally be used as a multi-unit or if there is a grandfather clause or some other way through possible zoning hearings to have the property rezoned.

The other areas were these are located and they are still there are in dead and dying rust belt cities or cities with more houses than people.. and or high poverty rate or demographic of heavily dependent on government assistance.. many times in the urban core areas of the bigger US cities.One of the folks I like in Indy made a comment on another post..

Are you dead set on doing work IN Miami?