It’s just a matter of identifying what market best suits your needs. 

A quick google search could help you identify the enforcement terms during your initial due diligence but you will want to verify before you close on the note. - For closing, first you will sign a loan agreement to determine what the seller will record, how much they will expect, exactly what you are paying for, and who will service the loan.

@Deanna Boss the only lesson here is don’t post incriminating statements when your clearly unIquely identifiable and being trolled.

If you are looking to be a remote investor, you need to first identify a market that can provide most of the things Stone Jin mentions. 

., a cash-out refi may be the easiest route without a subject property identified.

We plan on only using post cards for the first touch because its cheaper and it will help us identify dead addresses. 

If you can identify, name, and get service on the former owner(s) then you can do the much easier and cheaper in personam QT, which you can often do yourself without an attorney.

The closer we can get to the raw data, the better we can identify patterns, but Zillow, Trulia, Redfin, Homesnap, etc. all provide data.

We have identified a handful of agents that seem like they would be a great fit.My questions are: - When it comes time to 'choose' an agent, what is the best way to kindly turn down other agents that we have communicated with?

We have identified two markets that we are very interested in that are not far from each other, but are across state lines.