Then, you can go the off-market route, and contact the owners directly via direct mail, door knocking, or cold calling the owners and asking them if they'd have any interest in selling. 2.

It is a single family home and sits on an irregular sized lot so I don’t believe it can be knocked down and rebuilt, but would definitely need to be renovated.  

This is not for everyone but if you're OK with contacting strangers, you can start with Zillow FSBO listings, contacting local homeowners (door knocking, cold calls), different forms of marketing to direct sellers.All the best!

I know that California is a Deed of Trust state so I am looking for information on how I can go about marketing (I was thinking about knocking on doors first), speaking with these type of sellers and the acquisition part overall.So a couple questions that I have are..What's the difference between Notice of Default and Notice of Trustee sale?

I get it .. but I also know how tough this business is and 97% of the people simply are not going to buy their way to success.. just like 90% of the newbies that post on BP will do exactly NOTHING in real estate we all get fired up.. but there is only so much of it to go around.. its FAR harder than it looks and it does either take some real good innate skills or lacking that some good liquidity so you can buy into the market.. thats why the Vanilla rental house game is so huge right now.. anyone who can fog a mirror can understand.. buy a rental put a tenant in it.. collect rent... past that when your talking about these more complicated transactions pretty tough to have no experience and just pay a few bucks and your going to be knocking down 250k profits.. its no different than the wholesaler guru who pitches making 20 to 40k a month .. can U yes how many do maybe 1% who try... or the guru who teachs flipping and making 50k per flip one a month... again how many can do that not many... one they don't think it through.. if your going to do 50k flips and one a month and you have 6 to 9 month cycle you need to buy 6 to 9 projects before you turn one.. how many starting out can do that.it would be more realistic to say hey start with one in 6 months then do 2 and maybe in five years your doing 10 to 15 a year.and or it really depends on markets... but gurus talk like all markets are interchangeable and they simply are not.

@Julia Hagen,Have you thought of door knocking her and having a conversation about the house and her motivation for selling it?

Cold calling, mailers, door knocking, etc.

Able to get the seller to agreed to knock down another $10g, in addition to the repairs and inspection fees.

Wholesaler finds motivated sellers through marketing (direct mail, signs, internet ads, door knocking, etc)2.

It just depends on your priorities and timeline.You make enough money to knock out those 401k loans quickly.