Search the forums for specific topics that interest you, and engage in the forums.If you are interested in free networking events, search for Black Diamond.

The good part about mentioning you are an investor is that if you make the lender feel you know the game really well, they will treat you like a potential repetitive income source.

While it is possible to make some reasonable assumptions for missing data, I would be careful when engaging a sale with inaccurate data.  

Any advice or opinions are greatly appreciated and I hope to meet many people and engage in awesome discussions in the near future!

Engage the five sences in your open house. 

If you don't show your value by being consistent and engaged in the meetups, especially when you don't have demonstrable skill in profiting from real estate deals yet, you are behind the curve.

I'm in the process of engaging http://propertytaxprotest.com/ to help contest the assessment.

Please remember that for many people, if an asset isn't sold before 2 years prior to needing to engage Medicaid/Medicare for nursing homes that assets can be seized to handle these costs. 

We also have an engagement period prior to this that covers planning an design work. 

But I would argue that especially if you follow the BP LEADS  funnel approach, you're going to be looking and vetting a ton of deals before you find a diamond in the rough and engaging a realtor for 100 deals before one is purchased.