She told me the owner, in his 90s, lives with her now after a stroke, and has been trying to sell his home with this agent, who told her there has been no interest, no inquiry and no showings, turned out the agent was trying to be the buyer, saying that he's willing to buy said property that no one is interested in for a deep discount. 

Our area gets 500 inquiries a month and only has 14 properties.  

just start calling banks and tell them your plans. see what they have to offer. don't let anyone pull your credit until you find the right fit for your needs, too many credit inquiries lowers your credit score. you'll be amazed what you learn by just calling around. good luck!

This will make your life a lot easier when it comes to handling day-to-day tasks like immediate inquiry follow-up communication, guest check-in and check-out communications, keeping your cleaners in-sync with the turnover schedule, integrate multiple OTAs to align on finances and availability. 

Make friends, a lot of friends.To your original inquiry, however, there are several ways to invest in foreclosures.

You need to be active responding to guests from inquiries all the way through check out..this means being able to head over to the rental at 2am because they cant find the breaker to turn back on the lights after repeatedly telling them where it is.2.

The number of inquiries from Asian buyers for California real estate continues to go up and we expect that will continue to be the case for many years to come.  

@Anthony Gayden thanks for letting me know, BP pulled my thread on this deal, I have an inquiry on what I did wrong...hopefully it will be reinstated.

But I did inquiry about the umbrella and seems to be one of the two ways.

As the OP, I had a ton of inquiries but all were universally sub-par in prospect quality.