Your way of communicating them can be improved.You cannot unilaterally end the lease.

I constantly had to monitor the progress because the property manager would not communicate with the contractor for status updates.

Virtually lowest crime. 

If the owner's can't be reached, is it possible to find who the lender is and communicate directly with them or is that not a viable option.I am hoping to flip this house.

To me, communication, transparency, willingness to work out problems are very important.

I thought that like most businesses they evaluate and re-valuate over time their P&L and Balance Sheets and if they seem to have more cash growing they would want to put it to better use and on the opposite end of the spectrum if they have virtually no reserves sitting there they would want to increase funds.

Its risky because your betting on appreciation at this point, however if you can cash flow enough to make it worthwhile then you might consider it.I'm not sure if Illinois is a judicial foreclosure state or a non-judicial, my state is non-judicial, if yours is the same, then you can bring the arrearage current to stop the sale no later than 11 days before the sale, however I have done it 1 day before the sale by communicating with the trustee that handled the sale.With the time that you have left, you could market for your end buyer and with their down payment or option funds, you could use that to bring the property current and stop the sale.If the property goes to auction and reverts to the lender, they will then put the property into the REO dept. and it will come out some months later as a listing by a realtor typically close to full market value.

I even use Skype and TeamViewer to communicate with clients so I'd highly recommend looking for one of the best with great references that interviews well with you.

Someone who puts virtually the whole deal together and then says: how about this?

As mentioned statute of limitations might have already ran out.I wouldn't even communicate with this past tenant.