Simply Don’t tell him any special reason you owe him nothing .

@Jose Garcia , on top of what others have mentioned, the most important thing to me to find out, is the amount owed on the home and compare that to the value of the home.I imagine the seller owes more than the home is worth, which is typical of a seller trying to get someone to take over payments.

Check out the local comps, look at the back taxes owed online, try and find the current owner, if you can get access grab your contractor and get an approximate rehab cost, check with the City to see if there's any outstanding violations.

Almost all of these were due to non-principal balance reduction loan mods.

We're reviewing the legalities of this with our securities attorney and our software heavy principals are investigating the APIs and the algorithm in general.

The owner owes $174k (and about 7k behind in payments).

They are available because no one else wanted them, and are the properties are often worth less than the taxes owed.

If you believe appreciation and inflation will happen then leverage is the way to go.Scenario #1 Own a single 100k house outright.Scenario #2 Own 5 100k houses with 20k down on each.If you have appreciation of 10%, scenario #1 gains 10k in equity and scenario #2 gains 50k in equity.With inflation, the debt you owe in scenario #2 will be worth progressively less.Interest rates are low now.

Found a guy in a decent neighborhood who would have sold me his house np for $80k, what he owed on the mortgage.

The tax liens are still valid - the property owner still owes the taxes.