Treat this like a business now rather than later. 

If they say no it's better to get that now then later.

They hate new investors because a lot of out of state people have bought in the area with the plan of sitting on the vacant property until they can sell it later for a profit.

Later I would like to get into tax liens and deeds.

hi chaim. i have not bought any houses at a tax sale. i have however, bought a few after the tax sale. here in erie county new york, if you buy from a tax sale, it can be a great deal. however, whatever was left on the past due taxes, you now owe. hence, you just bought yourself a liability. i don;t know about anyone else here, but i can manage to create my own bills myself without buying anyone else's tax liability. so, watch out for that issue. it may just be a new york thing, but maybe not. one of our local municipalities here has their own tax sale auctions aside from the county. that one, if you buy from them, you get a clean slate, no past due taxes left. however, they like to start the bidding out at what was owed to them, so, there would be no " leftover" anyway. by the way, they sell very few of them. lol. i usually go back to them after the sale and offer to buy some of the " left over" properties, usually for pennies on the dollar and i get them. you think they would figure out to start the bidding low if they are gonna sell them cheap later on anyway. but, regardless, even after i buy them dirt cheap, i still get them with no left over taxes owed. also, you need to know if your state is a " redemption" state. i. e., can the owner come back later and redeem their house by paying the taxes?

The cost of management -- again, unless you're comfortable there -- trying to track down late rent, finding good renters (since most good tenants want to live in better areas), along with the higher maintenance costs associated with bad areas all tend to wreck any profits the theoretical numbers show.

You would not be able to later change your mind and utilize the $100k as part of the exchange. 

I also suspect that some of the relatives don't want the owner to take action on the houses during their own lives, as they have plans for the property themselves later on- I have encountered on one house already. 

I did a little research on reverse 1031s, and this is what I'm thinking:1) Buy some rentals in CO as our reverse 1031 replacement properties; maybe a fourplex plus a house we could live in later on, and have our PM manage them for us as rentals. 

Right now I have 2 weeks in Italy, a week in Colorado, and Tahoe banked to use later.