You can go to the county Geographic Information System (GIS) or tax assessor websites, depending on size and sophistication of county, and you may find free tools available to search sales by neighborhood or zip code or price range and dates.

That is what I do with my SD IRA, I also am a managing partner of a fund which invests in notes and allows sophisticated and accredited investors to make double digit returns in a passive position.

And all of this will yield first hand experience and perspective in our market so that when we do move towards property management, we will be able to have a much more sophisticated discussion about our needs and expectations due to the fact that we have done it ourselves. 

Returns are attractive and you can think of these depending on the approach as being big, sophisticated flips over a 3-5 year period.  

I mentioned in another thread, but investing in a hot market like Toronto, is possible, but requires more sophistication by the investor.

There will typically be a full marketing package with financial actuals and pro-forma that brokers will send you on request.For smaller deals you're typically working with less sophisticated sellers and may get a rent roll, but I don't usually expect a full P&L report (nor do I trust the ones I do get) before I get into due diligence.

I haven't explored condo conversions or anything like that as it involves a more sophisticated market understanding that I don't have yet.

@Ashley Benning, many sellers (at least the more sophisticated ones) won't accept proof of funds letters from hard money lenders.  

This is one in which the issuer (or a person acting on its behalf) has sufficient information to evaluate, and does, in fact, evaluate, a prospective offeree’s financial circumstances and sophistication, in determining his or her status as an accredited or sophisticated investor.

You will see they are investing in the strongest markets, have great broker networks / access to deals which is critical in a highly competitive market, can raise significant capital to take advantage of scale, more disciplined / conservative underwriting models, have simple well thought out business plans to increase the properties value, using fixed rate 10yr loans to take advantage of still incredibly low rates historically speaking and use more sophisticated tool sets to help understand how fluctuations in occupancy, rents, etc may impact their models.