Cash flowWhenever I speak to and help investors I tell them it's a 5 legged stool that true investors look at, not just one leg.And as always this is just my opinion and personal experience of winning and losing at this game.

@Robert Whitelaw   generally speaking I agree with the buy hold will win the day.. but its just cannot be a blanket statementthere was  a very big apartment owner here in PDX that rolled up all his units  and cashed in 20 million in equity.. went to vegas in 05 on a massive 1031... bought 100 million in multi there.vacancy rates as you know on fully leveraged multi  in excess of about 10 to 15% put huge strains on those and much more than that you have to feed them.vacancies in 08 in vegas hit 10 to 40%  he LOST THEM ALL.... had he just held pat on his vanilla PDX he would be fine and our stuff here has sky rocketed  must like a little brother to silicon valley real estate.. 

You really need to think beyond profit and make sure this is a win win for everyone. 

Effectively they foreclose on you and win.

Win some and you lose some..

I can't emphasize that enough.

Sounds like you've got some opinions about it.Personally I've held several trust deeds (more than 50) and if I were to compare the percentage of trust deeds that performed at the expected rate with percentage of rentals or flips that performed at the expected rate, trust deeds wins hands down. 

I treat all things in life as an experiment and to make myself not beat myself up over the "lost profit", I began to consider profits as a gauge on whether or not I'm winning in this GAME.

This is a symbiotic, win-win kinda field.  

2- Am I right to assume that even if I win the bid at this auction, the mortgage/lien not showing up on the county's record will still exist?