This is an odd occurence as far as the Southeastern Pa housing market anyway(I've never heard of it happening here) but please keep us posted on the outcome, especially if your brother decides to go through with letting the seller stay as renter (or squatter with a heep of your brothers money, wow! 

While it is nice that the area is becoming "nicer" more quickly there is some questionable workmanship occurring and a possible glut from oversupply. 

The greatest wealth migration we have seen in over fifty years is now occurring.Let's rewind to December 2008 when the recession was officially announced. Over the next five years, we experienced significant job loss,...

I want to be covered against some freak accident occurring that could wipe out the rest of our assets.

@Rick Crabtree yea I noticed that when I was really cavalier about trying to insert or delete fields into tables that were already saved, from the base table edit GUI, weird errors started occurring although that seems to be avoided by just inserting stuff at the end instead of trying to insert new fields between other ones.Are you saying that if I link a table in the database to calc I might potentially be able to insert fields in whatever order I want, and move them around, in calc, or delete them, and then it would be appropriately changed in the table of the database without those weird errors that destroy the table?

Until the foreclosure sale actually occurs it still belongs to the owner. 

There is no way to know for sure today, but as the months go by, you can bet I will keep a close on on movements and signs that will trigger that the inevitable is about to occur.

The closing should occur through a title company to make sure you get a proper deed. 

If the case had gone the other way, it is likely that Detroit would not have experienced the steep decline in its tax base that has occurred since then

If that is occurring likely the transients are being pushed out as the area is changing positively.I used to be in commercial development assembling parcels for developers on larger projects.