Yeah, that guy can splurge on a new car, take expensive vacations, and wine and fine....so long as he stays on the high income treadmill.

It is completely vacant, with an abandoned car sitting next to the property since 2008.

@Jon Klaus I think I will reverse engineer the process.

@Caleb MatteisWould you feel like you had to buy a car just because the used car salesman told you to buy it?

It is a 1000 sf 3/1 with a 1 car detached garage listed for $69,900.

Lots of valuable information.I am currently working a more than full time job as a structural engineer in Austin.

So if you buy a 100K home and you put down 20K you'll have a mortgage of 80K @ 5% for this example your payment would be $429 and say the rent is $600 you can use 75% of that which is $450.If you make 2K a month here is the DTI breakdown which should be your biggest concern with what you're trying to do.  2K + $450= $2,450 of incomeDebt: 429 + ( New home payment ( $750) ) = $1,179.00  New home would be the primary residence that you talked about buying.Assuming you have no car payments or c.c. payments or personal loans your debt to income ratio would be 48.1% which is acceptable under FHA guides ( up to 54.9% ) but pretty high for conventional ( 43 and under is pretty secure but I've seen up 49% with major reserves)  You would also need 429 x 6 = $2,574.00 in reserves for your Investment Property6 months of reserves = $2,574.00Total income $2,000 base + $450 ( 75% of 600 )Liabilities = $1,179.00I know sometime I'm all over the place but plug in your real numbers with these and add taxes, insurance and credit cards, car payments and any personal loans and try to keep your total DTI under 43%For taxes do 1.25% x the sales price and .3% x the sales price for Home Owners Insurance. 

I call this a "heads up" letter.If mailed sufficiently well in advance of sale, I'll receive a number of nixies that I can skip-trace or reverse engineer to either find the owners or buy the lenders note and decide my best play forward.Second letter might contain some special message or attention getting device to encourage that letter gets opened and read and generates a lead call (call-to-action, also know as a CTA).Time permitting, I might segment the list further and create highly targeted, specialized letters that address a host of problems unique to their situation, which I call a "Perfect Storm" letter.Ultimately, my objective is to out-spend and out-research you as my same business rival.

When you said a standard purchase agreement, were you referring to a CAR RPA (residential purchase agreement)?  

Contractors are below used car salesman from what I have seen.