But nothing beats visiting the neighborhood itself and having a look around. 10 minutes of driving will tell me more than 4 hours on the computer and telephone.

I financed a steel fabrication business where we produced metal enclosures for the telecommunications industry, thos small metalboxes you see on telephone lines, terminal boxes you might have noticed in neighborhoods that the phone company uses.

This area is moderately forested and there are power lines on wooden telephone poles.

I then did a reverse address lookup on whitepages.com to get the telephone number....Good Luck !

I use to hate it because you do get a lot of spam the solution, post anonymous, don't write you email any were in the ad(only telephone number).

I have purchased a few properties sight unseen in a time crunch but only with a telephone call to an appraiser who I knew and trusted.

Business cards, leaflets and telephone directories will only bring in limited business and are just a waste of money.

There is a cost per search but they give several telephone numbers and addresses where the owner of the property may presently be located.

But what do you guys use as the telephone number to contact?

As a full time business owner and part time investor it is hard to commit to 1.5 hrs to listening to a long distance telephone call.The $50 fee is a drop in the bucket and the long distance phone call irrelevant.