I think of renters as having no imagination.

I imagine if they stop paying the mortgage they will have also stopped paying the HOA dues, etc. as well.

I imagine these would provide some nice uncorrelated returns.Also looked into quantitative hedge funds like Renaissance, Two Sigma, AQR....but these appear to be for multibillionaires and Ivy League endowments.

You are looking to do a "cash out refinance" I would imagine.

If the property doesn't move quickly and he doesn't give up on selling then I imagine he would be willing to continue negotiating with you. 

I can't even imagine being in a situation that these people are facing...

If you’re first home in, I’d imagine Comcast isn’t in a hurry to get one home on it’s grid.

A lot of that occurred after the recession or in very rough markets, or extremely rural markets.Now if you are talking a normal market, and an investor who is not already independently wealthy from some other business and has a ton of cash to spend, I imagine the podcast episode would sound like this:Host - Tell me how you got started.Guest - I saved up cash until I had enough for my first investment.

It is fairly easy to read and not a whole lot of fluff like I imagined there would be.

I would imagine eventually it all comes to the specifics of the property itself but then the search is becoming to exhaustive, so I would want to focus on couple geographical areas and be able to search there.Currently I'm in CA and looking to invest in other states.Any idea on how to get started and get focused on an area would be appreciated.Thanks in advace to all the comments.