Too many lose sight of this and divert their attention to other areas that become meaningless or irrelevant if the real estate is not sound. 

We live in a heavily wooded city and this stuff is par for the course. 

Now I've finally hit a much more steady patch (knock on wood) now that they're all renovated and up to a certain standard (new roofs, hvac, etc).

.- Most of the deals that came our way were for 60-70yr old wood frame buildings, that had been owned by their current owner for 25+ yrs, and we felt there was a definite risk that the economic viability of the asset was less than our planned (buy and hold) time horizon, and we were also highly skeptical of the insurability of some of these buildings or that the cost of insurance would not balloon once the ownership transition forced the insurers to reassess the building.Ultimately we pivoted to retail/light commercial mixed use properties.

Zillow is very common but beware that a lot of these sights don't give you vital information and only give you a "Renter Score", not an exact credit score or other vital info.

My family has an extensive portfolio of SFH in the DFW metroplex and has seen the property taxes go up over 100% across the whole portfolio in the last 3 years and it’s no end to the increases in sight.

You have Yosemite and Red Wood National park near populations.

@Brian Woods I am looking at using batch leads for sms lead generation.

to me its market dependent and hind sight you know what they say.so for me it was selling the 2 homes I had in Palo Alto and one in MIlpitas.Milpitas I bought that brand new for 79k  Palo Alto one of them I paid 180k for and the other 350k.. if I held those until today..

I'll be going back to busting your balls and attempting to take away any shred of market share you have worked yourself into up in my neck of the woods.