How much equity is actually in a property (semi-rhetorical)? 

You can treat their request like you would if someone wanted to park a semi truck in your rental or run a daycare center in your rental. 

If you're looking to pick up listings, professional and semi professional letters will suit you better.If you're looking to buy, you need something more personal.If you're in to both, a hybrid solution with your Brokerage info and logo printed nicely combined with hand written note or at least handwritten psProbably will be a few here that will tell you the opposite of what I've just said, but I've run a number of successful campaigns all over MetroTex....just sayin'.Hope that helps. 

99 times out of 100, they go from having an annoyed look on their face to one of curiosity/semi concern..."

As to the rest, and as others have pointed out, flipping is a very active job and buy and hold is a semi passive job (being a landlord is never fully passive).

Just make sure to follow up every couple months with anyone who gave a semi-reasonable price or had some motivation to sell.

I put sound board over the door and locked it shut for privacy between the up/downstairs, added a bathroom with pump-toilet (drain was above basement level), kitchen, turned the area under the stairwell into a large closet (semi-walk-in). 

But for the most part on a non 1% property its way too hard to cash flow with any semi aggressive amount of leverage 

I did however, want to see if investors had better luck using other marketing services (specifically, in the SE MI market).

I'm going to post this in here since it is semi relevant.