If title insurance is not offered, then it's totally buyer beware and you have essentially the same risk as buying on the courthouse steps.Question 2:  You don't have much opportunity to conduct more due diligence than can be accomplished from the curb.  

First, contact the sheriff conducting the sale.

I don't conduct much business at home but very soon I'll be moving my desk and files from the desk area in our living room to my man cave in the basement as trying to do accounting with 3 little girls bouncing off me isn't easy!

If you really want to help your client it is better to work with someone who knows how to conduct a short sale.

Prior to closing a real estate transaction we conduct a "name search" with spelling % parameters, and then review the various names and judgments, and attempt to determine if they are one and the same as the seller of the property, to determine clouds on title.

Feel free to call me and I can show you how to conduct your due diligence on multifamily assets.

Since I am new to this and already have a full time job, I am not entirely sure what I can offer in exchange for some education, but I am pretty handy, can do some free work for you or conduct some research for you, or possibly just share some knowledge as I have been in the home improvement retail market for a number of years and know a fair amount about electrical, plumbing and building products as I have been selling those for about 30 years. 

They try to conduct business only by email.  

Depends on state laws and how far they carry the requirement of using your money vs. administering other funds to conduct brokerage operations. :)

If the location is habitable by humans, then I'm open to invest.My second filter is that I personally need to be able to visit.That means zero Muslim countries because they don't accept Jews, especially Jews who have an Israeli stamp on their passport.The third filter would be that it must be in an area that I can conduct reasonable amounts of research on from my computer, so if there are no English resources for me to research, then the odds of buying are slim to none.I have properties on both coasts of the US, but nothing international yet.