I’d appreciate opinions on adding a patio and allowing tenants to put patio furniture on it.

They can look up the sales for last 6 months in any area and then from those sales pick out the houses with similar square footage, same bed/bath count, and then average those sales out and that's your ARV.Florida can be rough. 

You picked great zip codes - I own (or have owned) in all that you have listed. 

My goal, while still new to the platform and the journey, is to pick up "grunt work" from experienced investors, in hopes of learning as much as possible as early as possible.Thanks,

The main lesson I learned was that if you have some experience you can pick the right property, in the right location, fill it with the right tenant and it can actually work out!

I picked a random date of 3/22/2010, and on that day, there were 21 courthouse foreclosures filed.I would expect the number of Short Sale (TAM) opportunities, today, to be practically zero.

For the past many months, I don't know anyone with more than, say, $5,000 in idle cash who isn't using Treasury Direct to get 5%+ on idle money; pick your term - short (4 weeks) or longer (52 weeks). 

I also called a house that's in my neighborhood with a for sale sign, didn't pick up the first time around noon, and I shoot her a text, didn't response.

Next best thing would be to partner up with a flipper and help get them deals.Best thing is to just pick one and go for it all in otherwise you get analysis paralysis.

You're not picking stocks...this is far more hands on and nuanced than looking up stats on the internet.