Can I just sell the house (with the squatters) to someone local that feels like dealing with it?

My thought is, wouldn't the bank be incentivized to sell at my rate, as opposed foreclose on it?

So, we are considering whether it would be better to forge ahead with building a home as soon as possible on this piece of property we already own, and then either selling it immediately after construction or living in it for 2 years and then selling.

The sellers were motivated to sell and I was able to negotiate a price reduction.

At The Stephan Group we don’t just SELL real estate.

Also, use the current days on market to be realistic when planning your time to sell on the market.

We would like to find someone who will work with us and, ideally, keep the mortgage in-house instead of selling on the secondary market.

if you can manage to live in it and rehab it over time, then if you live there 2 of the last 5 years prior to selling it the gains are tax free up to a certain amount. 

I hope that you can distinguish between those that are practitioners wanting to help and those that are professionals with something to sell here.

If not, I would suggest selling it.