Took out all of the carpet, restored all of the old hardwood floors underneath, bought nice leather furnishings and blended them with functional antiques, placed a beautiful antique persian rug in the living room, replaced all lighting with early 1900s look.  

Omaha, NE (steady but not super growth oriented)5.

You should ask the police captain over there if they have a Problem oriented policing unit or community oriented policing unit to see if they can focus on your neighborhood.

Someone that will be annoyingly detail oriented and thorough!

Couple that with an overall softening of the real estate market and the potential for mortgage interest rate hikes, and it adds up to a good time to sell and invest in areas that are more free market oriented. 

There is a growing contingent of planners that are niche focused, planning oriented, and don’t get paid to manage money.

That company and a couple of other reo oriented auction companies operate the same way as you describe.  

Check out the REIA in Sarasota, they meet Wednesdays for lunch at Oriental Buffet.

I find my buyers via networking and relationships, a real estate-oriented person with a self directed IRA who is looking for a reasonable (5-12%) ROI would be a good candidate.

There's a pretty active REIA here and irs oriented to newbies.