So I've been working on this wholesaling idea for about 2 weeks now. I may be going about finding property all wrong so i could use some guidance.

normally i just drive around in different areas of the city and look for abandoned or distressed property, vacant lots etc. I write down the location and when I get home I start searching for info. I locate the owner, transaction price, tax rolls etc.

But what ends up happening is that i find someone who owns 10-20 different properties and is just hanging on to em. I found a couple places yesterday that looked promising and by the time i finished my research I realized one was owned by a home inspector who owns a bunch of property, one was an FSBO and the other was someone else who owned a few properties, rentals apparently.

my other source is just going to the courthouse site and looking up lis pendence filed within the past few weeks. I'm just not sure how to approach these and even so as far as I can calculate theres not enough equity in most of these to even try and get 70% FMV. these are all of the people who bought using subprime loans in the past few years and now they cant cover the mortgage.

so, where to look?
does anyone even mess with houses listed with a realtor? I can access an MLS search, I cant get specific details but i can see which area of town it's in and go looking.