I personally have pretty much given up on references; it's an additional hoop for applicants to jump through, which can help weed out folks who aren't really that interested.

I think I have about 100 wholesalers emailing me here in Columbus, Ohio Do you tend to weed through all the emails or do you have a sorting oder you go through?

I grew up in it so have more than a passing knowledge of it.Oh also there is Lake Shastina out of Weed CA.then A developer his name escapes me Oh i got it Jeff Dennis. he bought large ranchs in CA  and called them R ranchs  and sold shares to the ranchs kind of like timeshare.. there are half a dozen of those and you will see those deeds go to foreclosure and tax sale sometimes.. there is one in Lake Berryessa.. one way up on the Klamath  river.

We weeded out the federal and state government and big timber concerns.. so basically all the private owners.. so from there he would type in the owners name and address.this took about a year and 50k or so paying for his wages and hotel rooms.Then once that data was collected I had my secretary run each lead through the reverse directory or phone book to get phone numbers.. we collect 95% of the leads phone number ( remember  this when EVERYONE had land lines) also rural areas always have landlines.  

Time is your friend in a long term hold.Finding good contractors is not easy as you have to weed through 80% of the crap to get the 20% worth their salt.

They do a great job of weeding out the scammers.I no longer have a "pet" policy.

It can get tricky, but your job is to go deep in the weeds so that you can confidently synthesize the deal to potential investors. 

I will agree with @James Carlson that a lot of the deals that I look at won't pencil, but you have to know how to negotiate them and weed through the trash.

I would encourage you to not get caught in the weeds with all kinds of measurables as many people on here like to make themselves feel smart by over complicating things.

Reconfirm before leaving for appt- make a short 30 second video (I used my iphone) of the unit to include with initial screening email to weed out tire kickers.