I totally agree, based on your objectives and fact you will not have a local PM, that trying a cash for keys approach might be the most productive. 

This adds another element of risk.It's better to have an emergency fund of cash or liquid investments than to rely solely on the HELOC for your emergency/reserve funds.Just my 2 cents.Jeff V

Parcel is 0% stones, level, north-facing and totally shaded, soil class is Rains and Grifton but we'd most likely engineer a raised bed if that is appropriate for the plants and parcel. 

Any property that has reached that financial situation is a liability and has reached it's sale point.I would be looking to sell and reinvest in income producing properties.The exception would be faith investors that rely entirely on appreciation and have the deep pockets to carry a negative income investment property.

I'm totally down for any BP community meet ups if anyone wants to get one going.

However, my concern is that if I purchase all four as separate entities (which I think is the smartest way to go so I can sell later with no problems), the closing costs of each individual purchase (total of four) is going to be crazy.

Some things to look out for are the fees. environmental fees, excessive weight fees, another trick of the industry is billing cycles. some will bill monthly so you are billed 12 times a year others may bill every 4 weeks so you get billed 13 times a year (52 weeks/4= 13 bill)based on my experience the big guys tend to play ball and kill on volume to shut out little guys. also these little guys rely on the big guys station to dump, so they charge a base fee and mark it up or put add on to make money.

I spoke with a couple guys who do a lot of fixing and flipping and they said they average between about 70-75K total for their rehabs, that is a full rehab. 

Then everybody and their brother would do thatWhether a loan mod occurred or not it does not change total amount due - they just roll it into a new UPB but the total payoff never changed

Solomon Smith it totally depends on how much time and money you have.