There presence in the neighborhood brings a sense of safety. 

I had already did some digging into his social media presence to see if he had listed our property with his wholesales over the weekend, and found nothing.  

Is it a false market in some cases   probably .. if the out of state investor goes off the feed the pressure on those assets would diminish to the local demand which in many areas simply is not very much.the other thing to keep in mind is markets are separated.. you have markets that are being sought after for cash flow but not much flip and fix retail goes on there and if it does its usually locals who don't need a BP presence to resell or talk about their markets.But for the cash flow markets this is the provence of turn key companies and sellers of lower end assets that create returns ( when they work right) that are greater than were other investors live.. thereby creating a demand

We also find a remarkable number of empties scattered about for folk who no longer have any corporeal presence.  

Would also love some prior experiences with private lenders as this will be new territory for us.

So far I have started to address my web presence, accounting structure and business entity construction. 

I know they have a presence in the suburbs but not sure about Cicero.  

That is located in a medium size town (60,000-70,000 pop.) that has a very decent military presence.

If you're interested in being involved in prepping/flipping a townhome post-foreclosure, I may be willing to trade some knowledge for a more local presence around the property.What are you looking to learn exactly?

This is new territory for me so I'm trying to get all the advice I can.