Why don't they always check the house out beforehand?

There is no way they (or their contractor) haven't seen a house before they purchase it.

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If you watch the show, several houses have renters and cant be seen before the auction. So at most they can drive by them.... It is kind of illegal to go on someone's property and be looking through their windows.

I used to work for the real estate department of the local county government. Houses are often sold off, sight unseen, due to tax problems. In fact, many of these houses are occupied with renters and no one is ALLOWED to go on the property without the renter's permission. The fact that a homeowner is in default does NOT violate the rights of the renter who occupies the property.

There was one case where we had to use eminent domain to take all of the houses along one side of a particular road (I believe there was 11 homes). A real estate investor came in and bought all of the houses as one entire bundle. Several of the homes had renters in them and he could not go on those properties without their permission, even though the ownership of the homes had changed hands from private owner to the local government owning them.

Due to legal restrictions (setbacks) all of the houses encroached on the new right-of-way even though they didn't extend onto the actual road surface. So this investor cut all 11 houses in half and closed off the sides that face the road. He took eleven 3 BR/2 BA houses and turned them into 2 BR/2 BA houses and rented out all eleven.

Do you really think they don't have a staff of people that scout the location prior to filming? There is not one moment of this show that isn't completely staged.