They tried loan modification but are having financial difficulties and her husband lost his job.  

Keep in mind the counter is not really a counter but more of an invitation to re bid for the next day- Use an agent that has closed many HUD homes as there can be difficulty with financed properties, selecting a title company and such- Finally, new asset managers have taken over in the last month or so in most regions(Sage Acquisitions) and based on what I have seen during this time your bid of 90K has no shot. 

Realtors have no skin in the game.

Hello BP, so i'm getting some difficulty when talking to an insurance agent because so far all of them are pretty clueless in helping me. 

(my mom wanted my husband to have skin in the game).

In time added more rentals and tax liens while my repair customer base increased, each income fed the other, now we are close to having no skin in the game as it is almost all tenant or tax lien money that has paid for it! 

Since the forwarding address will be outside the US, and difficulty converting a US dollar check to local currency, he has suggested I deposit the security deposit directly into a US bank - he has provided me bank acct number.

There are tax and reporting issues specific only to foreign investors, but these are all technicalities that can be overcome.The bigger difficulties lie in investing, managing and controlling your assets long distance. 

I can entirely agree with the difficulty in trying to understand the logic of spending $3k on a lien that appears to have a valuation of only $2k.

That is difficult, I know :)  I think it often when I see my places, but you have to let it go.