I'm hoping someone can clear up discrepencies on my tax payer site where I'm finding owners and addresses. If you care to investigate you can find this through Assessor Site.

I have located one property, 1401...

Checked some data and it seems that some of them were bought in 2005 -2006 at about the triple current price.Tax values and zillow estimates are way above asking prices.

As in any business, you will need to split test your marketing efforts.

Oh and for marketing you are right that it would not make much sense to do it the way you typically here it getting thrown about on BP.That is because it is mostly wholesalers that need to find a lot of deals and keep a constant stream of really good deals in the pipeline.If you are only looking to buy 1-2 properties in a year, or something like that, to add to your portfolio you just scale it back.You can get a list of absentee owners from MLS data, or from a title company or if you have to buy a list it should be a fairly cheap one since it is easy to get the data.

I would definitely test the waters BUT...I would do it VERY carefully.

At the higher end - desktops all the way up to the servers that process all your data - Intel is the big dog.An interesting book on this topic is "The Innovator's Dilemma" by Clayton Christensen.

For me it helps to start with your own little network.At various stages of the course a few representatives from local RE companies came in an introduced themselves and a little pitch to have the students consider working for that particular company.I passed the test on my first attempt , I then set up appointments to speak with whom I was interested in working for to get an idea of the cost ( desk fees, admin fees, E&O insurance, commission splits, ) and any other fee that may be associated with being a Realtor.

I no longer have MLS access so i have to rely on Realtor.com and others just to find rents in areas and asking prices and recently sold data.

I take them through a scripted conversation in order to collect the data necessary to determine their level of motivation.

Here you will meet wholesalers who will point deals to you and rehabbers.Your market is one of the top emerging markets in the country.To find a good property manager go to IREM.org search for ARM certified they passed a battery of tests to become certified.Good LuckPaul