In many cases the zoning department have older versions of code books or maps that may help find that answers. 

So when they started they had a 550 to 600 credit score and 2 years later they are somewhere between the same 500 and 600.  

Well, that's a bit difficult to quantify as a lot of it has to do with political scoring and public perception. 

Forget about credit reports/scores, you'll rarely see good ones in these areas. 

Each of these states have come up with their own slightly different versions on why this could be a great option and what would be the benefits"  http://bitcoinist.com/us-states-plans-enable-tax-payments-bitcoin/

Credit scores are excellent and we have sufficient funds for down-payment for either scenario, however we would rather not tie up our cash in down-payments so we can continue to make more purchases. 

There's a free version that gives most of the features but it does have ads.

My understanding is that you then have basically purchased the property with cash and therefor you do not need to season the property (i.e. get renters in) once the rehab is finished before pulling out fix debt on the property (obviously credit score and debt to income can be issues here).  

I priced one this morning at 75% loan to value for a client with a 740 middle credit score and the interest rate was 8.75% and it cost 3.25 points to get there.Hope that helpsStephanie

@Chris Davidson Reasons usually are bad credit score, DTI is too high, and the person/family has to put more money down in order to lower DTI.