Unless you have plenty of spare time, which it doesn't sound like, I would suggest you continue to invest your time in school and get your degree, so you have a credible way of establishing yourself in the work place.Once, you complete your degree and are employed, concentrate on paying off any student loan debt if you have any - if you don't have any - your on the way! 

If it were mine, I'd concentrate on renting it out, and just ignore this issue.

Foreclosure investing for dummies is a fun and oddly comprehensive (if not high level) NOLO press paperback, on foreclosure purchasing.What state are you planning on concentrating your efforts on?

I currently envision my efforts will be concentrated in my general area: Memphis, Millington and Shelby County, Munford/Atoka and Tipton County, and/or possibly Fayette and Haywood Counties as well.

Houses and small MF owners do finance, so I would concentrate on that stuff first.  

Key though is to concentrate on the following:1. 

.- Your investment is concentrated in a property, while you can buy futures over an index and the risk is distributed among the stocks that compose the index.- Usually there is leverage associated to real estate purchases and leverage increases risk.- People tend to feel overconfident about real estate even if they dont know what they are doing.

If anyone with more experience in this area could give me a handful of neighborhoods on which I should concentrate, that would be very helpful. 

I'm beginning to search for the higher rent concentrated areas around me, ie.

I would concentrate on educating yourself in Real Estate to prepare yourself for the next big opportunities when the next downturn comes.