Also, public housing steals the well-behaved low income tenants from private landlords, so we are left with criminals, etc. 

That's about as specific as I want to be in a public forum because I still have tremendous respect for him and I hope to reconcile eventually.  

@Daniel HanStep 1: use the BP search function to find the million other threads that ask this exact same question Step 2: Realize the BP search function isn’t the best and switch to google and repeat step 1.Step 3: realize this question is highly personal and depending on your personal goals, risk tolerances etcStep 4: don’t advertise on a public forum how much money you have Step 5: Profit.

If the document is online it is in the public domain.

I would look into investing in publicly traded REIT’s if I were you.

No....contracts are not recorded/public record.  

You can do this with public sites and searching property records.

Public notice from county.

I am currently going through the same process with 5 adjoining lots hopefully in the end I will have a 45,000 square-foot piece of land, jogging distance from the ocean. all in all, it should probably take about a year and a half to acquire each lot as I am not going through the process on all of them at one time hoping that I have a better chance of acquiring it piece by piece. if someone were to outbid me at the public auction I would lose the property but get my money back

Or is to far out there and to far from public transport (15 minute walk to metro).