I've also had success on the MLS, scouring it for deals and moving quickly.

Duplexes in nice areas over here tend to be snatched up almost immediately, so you might just want to scour redfin.com for awhile to familiarize yourself with prices instead of looking at particular properties.  

Are there any foreclosure paid listing sites that are worth the money or do I continue to scour all the usual MLS sites and look for homes in my area with the white paper/blue tape?

I have been scouring a certain zip code ad nauseum for a property.

A clever way to approach general/basic questions you may have about investing, is to write down all your questions, then search and scour BP's website looking for the answers.

I have listened to countless hours of podcasts, scoured this forum for a few months even attended a few local REI club meetings and now its time for the rubber to meet the road. 

Realtors and their assigned assistants have access via MLS to more sales than you will find scouring Trulia, Redfin, and the like.  

They have teams of agents who scour the MLS non-stop.

In sourcing deals I have been following alot of what Lisa Phillips does with WCN and simply scouring the web.

Some of them have started calling me with potential deals - nothing worth pursuing yet, and I'm still educating most of them on what a "deal" is to me, but I'm wondering whether the pros here have experience working with both buyer's agents (someone who can scour the MLS, etc.) and alert you when they find something they think might interest you, and a seller's agents, who will call you when they have a listing they think you might be interested in.I know there are pluses and minuses with both, but here's what I've heard:1) If you're going to elicit the assistance of a buyer's agent, you should let that person know if you're also having listing agents call you with deals.2) The listing agent is likely to be more motivated, since they'll get both ends of the commission, but they'll obviously be calling you *only* with their listings, so it will take time to build up relationships with enough of them to keep any meaningful number of leads coming in.Opinions?