You can always take a ton of pictures.As I understand it, you should do a move-in walk through whenever possible and have them complete all of the initial boxes before handing over the keys, like a car rental.

Lots of podcasts I have listened to have said they searched FSBO sites to look for deals.

http://www.bing.com/search?

Be sure to search or ask for any question you may have, it's great here!

Erin,Your local investor associations generally have a list of different contractors for investors to use.Companies that cater to investors understand you are searching for 2 things.

Get the names of investors (or their LLCs) that own more than 10 houses and search the county's real property records (not the appraisal district for taxes) under their name and find the bank that filed the deed of trust for their properties.

Jeffrey Mark - type in some terms regarding your question in the search function.

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I've searched other forums to find advice on this but I'm still not sure where to start.

The key to the first call is determine if the are; 1) Interested in selling, 2) Determine how motivated they are3) Get an idea of the price they wantThere are plenty of people search sites on the net to help you find them.