The criminal justice system is insanely unfair and if you do give someone a break who has had a tough time, they may reward you with loyalty.

You could probably just do the search yourself (Google etc), however skip tracing companies specialize in this and you're really paying for the expertise and YOUR TIME.

Find one that you feel comfortable with and use them for their knowledge and expertise.  

I'm in Cuxhaven Germany and reaching out to German and European Bigger Pockets members because I'd like to set up a European Bigger Pockets Master Mind group.One of the purposes of the mastermind is to focus on pooling together resources, be it funding, knowledge or expertise, for all the deals this growing group might offer.

Like @Alan Asriants and @Matthew Paul said location, location, location, an area during the day and night are very different things in Philadelphia.While the cashflow might be great, the greater the risk the greater the reward, but there are still plenty of other areas where you can get 200-400/month without being near the largest open air drug market on the east coast.

It has been my experience that investors want to know credibility, capability and expertise before they invest with their hard earned capital. 

Syndications are naturally a higher risk asset class so you should be getting rewarded for taking that risk by getting more return than the stock market.

Leveraging Robbie's local market expertise, we quickly evaluated the property's potential.

Leveraging Seth's local market expertise, we quickly evaluated the property's potential.

You should look at it from business cycle and cap rate cycle , I could send you some charts when it ks more safer to invest at syndication….The risk when market at cap rate 4 compare to when market is at cap rate 6 is vastly different , you may want to wait until cap rates are stabilizing enough before investing so your risk / reward ratio is way higher.also you need dig deeper into supply/demand in the apt market as we are now on highest supply where there is strong pressure to rent growth.