You will learn much like - who are the players in your market, brokers, agents, loan guys, handy men and contractors( just drive by the properties) Take notes and then play "pretend a deal" like paper trading stocks, by using what you are learning to pretend your first deal without risking anythingbut kicking yourself in the pants for not actually doing it for real, should it turn out to be a GREAT deal!

--preventative maintenance inspection schedule.

How to prevent this?

I only see this working well if you intend to sell to a retail buyer when the market rebounds. the poor cash flow would prevent many investors from looking at these properties.

When I alerted my agent she replied that "That house was sold the same day it went public, big players are buying up foreclousers directly from the banks before they hit the MLS".

As an aside, I did win the bid, but even though it was twice the house of my current residence and in a comparable if not better neighborhood and twice the tax appraisal, the mortgage balance would have been less than the one I have and that prevented me from getting FHA financing.

Municipalities, government can partner with larger players and together can eat your lunch....meaning make things so difficult that you can't conduct business and you will be swallowed up like you are doing at the firesales.

The reason that most properties aren't overbid is that there is nothing preventing anyone from making a better offer to the estate before the court hearing.

and is there a way to prevent this problem in the future?

True, some complexes are not FHA approved, which would prevent us from selling them to a buyer who needs FHA financing, but we are buy and hold landlords.