Relay the business plan of the project you are working on to him/her and she can help give you some perspective on what their clients have offered over the years. 

If a tenant 'disappears', it's usually because of financial issues and that they have already been served disconnect notices by the utility company and once power and heat get turned off, they figure that the game is over and move out, leaving a mess and broken pipes behind (especially in the freezing winter temps).  

I'm thinking of using combination of LOCs and HELOCs to serve as my reserve funds, but I've been warned several times that this can be risky. 

Lots of opportunities to buy great properties if you know what the look for (the sweet spot of property size/features as I like to tell my clients).

Try to find out if they are at each other's throats as if they are, you could go thru the entire Mortgage Loan process only to have one of the spouses' attorney wait until closing day and suddenly advise their client to not sign off on the sale in an attempt to extort concessions for their client from the other spouse! 

An example, we had a client that had a property take along their frontage appraised at 1.3M.

What do you guys who are property managers for clients think?

Hold firm on timeframes as this helps your client.

What I usually do for my clients is negotiate a clause through which the Buyer issues a release of their contract upfront and the attorney or seller holds it in trust and only records it if there is a default.

You may be better served seeking P.M.L. for the remainder 20%.