Some do desktop underwriting, which is akin to the Zillow estimate, because no one comes to view the house and the value is from recent sales and Price for the square footage. 

Many a night my friend and I have scoured the local grocery stores in search of good cookies to fuel our computer gaming shenanigans, and many a night have I been disappointed.

Worst case you'll have to drive to your county office to search their computers for the notice of trustee's sale, notice of foreclosure or notice of sale document (the name of the document depends on which state you live in).This notice typically includes the homeowner name, address, date of auction, principal balance of the loan (or judgment amount), auction location, lender and attorney names.Good luck Newton! 

Follow others, please follow the advice you get on forums from anyone that owns a computer and can spell "real estate" :) 

I also recommend multi-family if you're planning to live in the property and want to cash flow better.I'm also an IT consultant working in downtown Seattle with an educational background in business and computer science.  

Ironically I am well versed in computers and have been a long time internet user, I do have to admit I haven't used forums that much.

As an engineer/computer scientist, I love the idea of it, and I've loosely applied this theorem to my own dating, ending up with a spouse that I think is the best fit of anyone I ever dated.

Cap rates are only usefull for property types where you can get reliable cap rate comps.  99% of small residential owners don't keep records accurate enough to be comparable and they would also not compute consistently the same way to have valid meaning.

I focused on Business Professors personally although I was in computer related field of study.

In the past 2 years, I've gone from being busy running a fairly successful computer related business (and burned/stressed out about it) to taking that part time and doing other odds and ends like buying/selling/trading things.