In Canada for example, CMHC published a report in 2017 that identified that 49% of all rental housing is owned by individual investors (non-corporate) and no doubt a good chunk of the corporate investors are also individuals who have set up corporations for liability management.Consumer grade IoT devices are generally good enough and cheap enough to use and can actually improve your net operating income (NOI), comfort and property aesthetics.

The owner did not account for management service in his published numbers but I used the numbers I was going to use. 

IMO, that can be detrimental to the foreclosing lender, because if the lender is willing to let a property go for far less than the published debt - many bidders would just ignore the property that is over-encumbered compared to market value.

I'm currently in the publishing world, and I would like to begin investing in real estate.

@Aleksandra DrawsDisclaimer- I do not know the area but here is how I would evaluate an area I was not familiar with :-Zillow is basically worthless in Texas as we are a non-disclosure state so sales prices are not published- George gave you some valuable comps from the MLS. 

I am not big on published data like that, because it is usually more broad or general, and vacancy rates are all over the board within localities and from property to property.

In TN however, most counties don't publish information about deeds or mortgages.

I still suggest it to people that need that pep talk, but recommend other people when it comes to investing in real estate and actual knowledge.I don't know if that is true about not being an expert in Real Estate or anything else when he wrote (or at least published) the book.I don't believe it is in question that he did start the successful businesses (That did go belly up) that he talks about in the books and as far as I know nobody has ever questioned his contention that he started investing in RE in the 70s and retired off the passive income in the early 90s.Again he doesn't do much to tell you HOW to get to the point of starting a mutli million dollar business or a huge cash flowing rental portfolio, but I do think he did actually do those things.

Or use the published info to generate generalized marketing to all the estates.

Beyond that, I do recommend picking up a copy of The Book on Flipping Houses, a book we published by author @J Scott .