I naively assumed if someone had an affiliate or preferred vendor they would do a better job of vetting them AND if things went wrong would proactively make things right. 

It costs about 250 a year to be an affiliate

PS, I am not affiliated with them whatsoever.

After utilizing a skip trace report from findtheseller.com (I'm not an affiliate but I'm a HUGE fan of the service), ancestry.com, and facebook, I finally tracked down the three heirs.

I do business & life coaching, affiliate marketing, looking for a camper to flip to get into Outdoorsy for next year in New England & always investing in real estate (LTR + STR)

Checkout Zen Business for an easy and affordable site to create an LLC (not affiliated) 

They partner up with affiliate companies and marketers to sell all kind of do dads to new agents that don't know any better and get hundreds to thousands out of them selling the next greatest thing.

I'm not affiliated with FIBI in any way. 

While geographic mix also played a role, they have been recruiting aggressively and like to cite the fact that more than 50% of the agents in the industry are not affiliated with big firms. 

Fortunately, I will be affiliating with a broker sometime this week and will also have access to the MLS and I'll be able to look at REOs and such (it's much easier on my introverted personality).