The seller of these properties is retiring and as such is ready to unload their tremendous number of houses in the area.

Maybe you could send some scary demand letter from a lawyer to hopefully deter them from filing suit against you for the unpaid charges but it is not a great situation especially since you are out of state. 

One of my best tenant/customers is a guy who draws a military pension and purchased a property from me on seller finance terms, I was willing to finance it for 10 years to make payments around the same as what rent would be, but he wanted to only carry it 3 years to pay off fast.

The seller is asking 38k for his property and if he bought this property regularly, all cash $38,000, the 28,000 covers the cost of the lien and the seller would walk away with about $3000 after everything is prorated. 

A quitclaim deed isn’t really an option for a buyer that demands title insurance.

So...Purchase: $109,000 (listed price, buts it's fallen out of contract 3 times - is that enough to motivate the seller to reduce the price?)

Joseph Ask the seller to carry the financing.

For Sale by owner, Sales Agreements.I’m curious to learn what clauses or protections others builds into their sales agreements to ensure (or allow for legal action) if a private seller sells their property to someone else / backs out of your deal once already under contract.Fortunately this has never happened to me and the last 6 properties I bought were from private sellers without a real estate agent or attorney, however It could and likely will happen at some point...

The value usually comes from deferred maintenance or some other seller distress. 

I am thinking that this house is probably going to make a good rental for someone but how do I advertise it, should I offer the seller less for the unfortunate view?