Our membership on various sites gives us access to this information, but sometimes we literally pick up the phone and call a management company or owner of a comparable property to obtain this information.

You just lost $1700 because you didn't want to buy someone more experienced than yourself a beer and pick their brain...Anyone want a free beer from me?

So the neighbors picked through, taking the computers, hard drives, kitchen stuff and the city scooped up the rest. 

Def a good idea to listen to the podcasts on BP as well as pick up some books.

Lastly, if you can try to pick a state or city that's within driving distance or a cheap and short flight, I recommend it. 

Pick a solid B-Class suburban area.

You can send a collections agency to pick up the debt but they won’t put it into collections that affects the tenants credit score for a certain period of time.

Again, I don't actually know anything about FL other than what I hear.The other option is to do what we midwesterners do and that is to wait for the CA, FL, and AZ markets to crash and then swoop in to pick up a deal or two. 

@Dominic Daoust The best suggestion I can make to you is to pick one place to start and start there.

If they prevent you from making 1 big mistake, the few thousand bucks you pay them would be well worth it.Probably a good idea to pick up the BiggerPockets Rental Property Investing book.