I once found a great web page that listed all the distressed properties that had been sold on a month to month bases or are least having been sold in the last year separated by zip code.

Is the owner in violation of any city ordinances or building codes?

Have your realtor check to see what Condo's sold for in the last year; in my area I can go onto the internet and ask the question of what houses sold for in a particular zip code and get the answer.

But it requires that you know how to understand/write code a bit.

Although they definitely  form my experience do a very good job on due diligence on the promoter ( borrower) I personally  provided a full FBI background check full credit etc etc.. and usally when you do that that weeds out most HML borrowers.

It gets betterThe house has daily fines accruing for code violations: Retaining wall needs repair, and needs to be scraped and painted to make the fines go away.

Second, unrelated to real estate, I have an 8 month old restaurant, and a one week old sandwich shop I want to promote.

You put in zip code for area to get approximate material and labor cost..This helps me keep things in perspective.

This, however, assumes that promoters will use Title III, which is not very likely for most deals.

I call him and he gave a new code to get into.