You can often look online for the county/city zoning map, parcel info, and zoning laws.  

In my free time, I like to play pickleball, bass guitar, and I write real estate based articles on LinkedIn.

Most are online, at civicsource.com  and happen once a month.

Hey Bigger Pockets community, I'm just starting out in Step 1 (get educated) on what I want to become a successful career in real estate investment.I also currently run an e-commerce business that is currently completely online, but would benefit from having a brick & mortar storefront, and I had an idea that maybe using the investment capital I'm looking to allocate into real estate into a commercial property my business can operate out of until I decide to sell the property in or rent it out to another business.I am obviously very naive when it comes to the complexity of any good real estate deal (especially commercial VS residential), but I'm hoping to spend as much time learning from everyone here who is on their journey as well.My main concern with the idea of buying commercial to operate my business out of it that I might struggle to rent it out afterwards and that there may likely be depreciation in the commercial real estate market over the next 5 years.I understand there is a lot of nuance depending on the local market but I'm guessing commercial is even less of a "safe" bet than finding a solid residential deal to leverage in some way.

Quote from @Daljit Singh: Unfortunately, you will have to play this out.

A couple factors that come into play when assessing cost:1.

We use DealCheck to underwrite deals and QuickBooks Online for everything related to accounting and numbers.Classes allow for separate P&Ls for each property.

Check county recordsUse online search tools like PropStream, Reonomy, PropertyShark, etc.Use local GIS mapping tools (ask your county)Search online directories for LLC or TrustTalk to neighborsHire a skip tracerSend a letter to the propertyThere are a lot of options.

Not seeing any real gentrification because of that, IMO.On the positive side, we do finally have a new Mayor that is actually from the City, but so far he seems to be playing the same games as his predecessors.

TrueDoor appears to have a great reputation online, I'll be giving them a call.