RE Investment Research Workflow

[Mike Austin]

I am not a sophisticated investor and am interested in learning more about the workflows that other people have for finding potential investments. There doesn't seem to be a best of breed platform for the average investor to use. I find myself bouncing from tool to tool to assess properties. I apologize if this has been discussed many times before but what does your process look like and what tools do you use?

What i'm doing now that is time inefficient and not as effective as it could be:

1. MLS/Zillow
2. Rentometer.com
3. NeighborhoodScout.com for Crime & Schools
4. BP Rental analysis tool
5. ... Tax Appraisal Website, Google population trends, 

I pay for the premium services on most of the tools I use and am willing to invest some money for a better process. Is there a way to set more precise investment criteria and receive notifications for possible opportunities? I feel like i should not have to manually curate a list of possible investments. Software should do this in a more advanced way.

Example advanced criteria: 

1.  Zip code rental rates/price point = .9-1%+
2. School rating minimums
3. Meets acceptable crime rate
4. ... Property tax, population trends, unemployment, etc, etc

I assume more sophisticated investors have automated tools like these, and I will have to build the software integrations myself, but maybe i'm just not aware of the tools that do this. Is there a better way? 

I would like to be able to apply the process to properties anywhere in the US and receive possible opportunities from across the country. I'm currently going off word of mouth and "intuition" for areas to investigate, ie: Memphis, Dallas, Jacksonville, etc...