Hey Seth! Welcome to the community. I'm in the Tampa area, so I don't know anything about your particular market. However, the process does seem to be pretty similar across the board.
The very first thing you should do before getting into any sort of real estate investing is to learn your local market. Learn about real estate before making costly mistakes:
1. Narrow down your desired home (seems like you have that done already).
2. Learn about your individual local markets based on your desired home. Search for areas via zip code or neighborhood. You should be able to easily search homes that have been sold and that are currently listed on Zillow or Realtor.com based on your criteria. Learn about the prices they typically go for, and how long these houses stay on the market. *Days on market are very important when flipping.
3. Evaluate your days on market: As you do your research, you'll see what kinds of homes sell the fastest and the slowest. The ones that sell the fastest are the ones you want to pay attention to. Study those homes and see what features they have and their floorplans. Open concept is popular in Tampa for example. Little things can make a big difference as far has how long a house stays on market: school district, lot size, age of the home, flood zones (avoid) etc.
4. Conduct off-market research: Targeting motivated sellers is the pillar of being a successful investor. Once you have found your desirable layout, evaluated the days on market for those homes, and learned about the market prices, start doing off-market research on homes similar to what you want to invest in. Typically, I look for at least 50% in equity from the start in order for me to even consider it.
Those 4 things will get you started. Its not a be-all say-all approach, but it will get your feet wet as you progress.
The next thing you want to consider is how you plan on getting these deals. Wholesalers are great resources since all of the work is already done for you. Wholesalers are already in contact with the homeowner have already gone under contract with them. Wholesalers take that original contract and will assign it to and end-buyer (you) for a small fee. You then take over and close with the homeowner. It's called an Assignment of Contract. Review your state laws for this. NOTE: Always do your due diligence before signing a contract with a wholesaler. Not all of them are honest people.
The other option is that you do everything yourself. You create your own business image and branding including advertising. Direct mail campaigns are very much alive today and are quite successful if done correctly. With this strategy, you initiate contact with the homeowner, go under contract, and you can either close with them and buy the house yourself, or you take on the role of a wholesaler and assign the contract to another investor.
Hope this helps! This is general information. We can always talk specifics later.
