This deal has turned very negative.  

Far too little is spoken of this in the various "you should' s" of REI advice. 

I’d be interested in keeping up with this post.

Any suggestions for this? 

What's up with this?"

Welcome to the site Keegan.

Focus on absentee owners and start with the ones who live the farthest away and only own one property in the area since they have the least use for the property.You can also drive for dollars, looking for anomalies of disrepair and then look them up in the tax records and use a site like Spokeo to do cheap skip tracing.

so are you doing this work for the seller for FREE.. ???

YUP this is reality in Oregon.. if your going to be a landlord it makes you committed to long term. 

to this post.