One smart thing the sellers did was provide contact info on prices for their pool maintenance company. 

Seeing as 90% of society has a smart phone glued to their face a majority of the day.But what have you found to be sensible amount of social media interaction?  

@Roger Smart     First, I am NOT an agent.

Real Estate, and Technology and mixing them into your passion! 

And 'C' will probably never be able to perfect title because he never had title, only Vendor's contractual obligation.I'd come up with a low initial disbursement number to get your foot in the door with 'B' then the rest is predicated upon recovery after delegating to a smart real estate attorney who knows title in that state.

From beginning to the end nothing is amiss,  We should all be so smart, so knowledgable and so luckyWe have bought 5 Duplexes (3 buys) and something is wrong with every one of them BUT we are still glad we bought them and they will all work out well.  

Time is something you'll never get back whereas with a good work ethic, smarts and sometimes a bit of luck you can find ways to generate money (and sometimes you don't need any 3 of those things lol, but those 3 have always worked for me). 

The smart investors that endure know when to take some chips off the table and have some deleveraged blue chip properties in their portfolio.

@Roger Smart,You're definetly not alone.  

There is appreciation as well if you buy smart!