Crunch all of your personal balance sheet and monthly cash flow until you are able to come to a decision.  

when i am speaking with someone over the phone i make a ballpark offer to them so i can see what we are working so i know if it is worth pursuing to check out the house and then i would crunch the numbers to make a real offer.whenever i make that ballpark offer, i am never even close to what they are asking. right now i send direct mail to absentee owners and am having no luck on the second mailing so far. 

...I know it's all about testing the market myself and seeing what works, and I plan to, but I would love to be able to crunch numbers and see which part of the lake 'possibly' has the best fishing spots before I drop my line in. ...Sorry for the long winded post, but any comment will be appreciated.

What you have to do is crunch the numbers.

It's a small triplex, and after crunching the numbers, it should cash flow around $450 per month conservatively after all expenses.

It's like getting in bed, or a partnership, with a bunch of people you have never met, and may not agree with down the road.All this said, I still believe in crunching the numbers above all else.  

The house is rented within days and the new tenant pays partial rent for the remainder of the first month immediately even though he isn't moving in until the end of the month, because he doesn't want to lose a well-presented house at a great price.With the next house, I found myself in a cash crunch and did the same thing, only at a slightly higher price point because the house was larger and better updated. 

Before doing any of those things, you should crunch the numbers on whatever location you are working on to make sure it can be profitable, before you decide to move w/ an agent and lender. 

My team and I have crunched a ton of data on the city, and it never made sense to me why people still buy NYC properties for investing; albeit you do benefit from price stability and perhaps even tax reasons given you'll be negative cash flow most of the time. 

For me, that is a large portion of real estate.IF you are thinking "should I max out my IRA savings to get enough saved up to invest in real estate" then there is a LOT of number crunching that needs to be done to figure things out.Dan Dietz