I am brand new to real estate investing.My idea was to network with some local process servers that would be willing give me info on homeowners that are behind on their mortgages.I would offer a cash "reward" to them on any property I purchase.Is this idea legal?

Hire a registered process server.

Working with a remote CPA who has experience in real estate is better than working with a local CPA who does not serve real estate investors.

Depending on serverity it may not be worth looking at the house.

I am 24, single and fresh out of college along with 40K in student loan debt (yay), recently licensed in real estate/working weekends as a server, and have been dying to break into REI. 

The tenant has to be served the complaint by a process server (not a notice to quit, but the formal complaint from the courts).  

You will need to find a process server to serve this Summons to your tenant (I don't believe you can do it yourself).After successful service of process, the case can go two ways.

Working with a remote CPA who has experience in real estate is better than working with a local CPA who does not serve real estate investors.

The problem is being a server we do not claim all our tips and I have a great credit score, but he said with this economy that won't matter.

i target owners all over the country just because of the colleagues i have been able to connect with and how small my local market. i would say focus on building out of market relationships with other people in the business realtors, investors, wholesalers, brokers and bird dogs. they all will know a out of area market better the you and if you're willing to split the profits of a deal it can lead to more frequent deals. as for direct mailings i don't use any of them for my local market any way. if find a potential deal i drive to the property and personally post a letter of intent to buy and leave it at that. never had to use a mailing for out of state just because i use bird doggers and realtors to help find out of are deals. also i work with other wholesalers that throw me deals that don't work for them but might work for me. if it doesn't work for me i just call up another wholesaler that the deal might work for and if it leads to closing then we slit the assignment fee. as for a google voice voice message i have none i use the service but i just left the stock message there and its has done fine for me. not saying this will work for anyone but it works for just fine. i nice tip that i use i using my google voicemail to text. this would require you to download the app to your phone or computer. i wait for the google servers to try and transcribe the voice message in to text and then depending on whats on the voice mail i text them back and just ask for general information about the home and it i get a reply within a reasonable amount of time i call them right asap. anyone who doesn't i make set a reminder to all them the next day or a few hours later.