I'm hoping to find an area for about $400-$500 SFR as a weekend getaway from hustle and bustle of the city life.Note: Weekend home only so daily commute should not be a huge factor.Any advice?

Once decided that they are interested in selling a property subject-to the existing mortgage have them stay in contact with you daily with updates keeping the motivation high.

Also, if you have some funds, you can try Probate Daily--they give you an Excel list of all probates that hit your selected county weekly.

If you're in the forums daily, it can't be a lack of time issue.

Plenty of well-positioned restaurants with great food and great service have failed just because they didn't get enough traction before the promoters ran out of money.If you buy multifamily real estate, however, you're buying an existing income stream.

I am more of a saver on little daily things like food.  

I read blog posts and scan the forums daily if not weekly.

These smaller targets include daily goals of 20 minutes of reading(love the BP books) or podcast listening, and analyzing 5 deals a day(thanks goodness the web tools work on mobile devices). 

If you are approaching owners of tax delinquent or neglected properties in the Philly area, I would like to offer this as food for thought. 

The program is built out at the county level, contains every county record (residential, commercial, land ect) It pulls and scrubs court records like divorce, probate, eviction, liens daily and matches to property owners in the database to build and store their history of all motivations.