Id focus on finding good blocks in good areas with as few boarded up homes and people hanging out on street corners as possible.

I suspect what you're hearing about is not agents trying to do a short sale for a client, but agents/scammer investors trying to gain gain title to skim rents, and hanging the seller out to dry.  

I will take my real estate agents test shortly (inside of 30 days) and have not totally  made my mind up where to hang my license but have a good idea.

If anyone could answer this definitively, they wouldn't be hanging around here, that's for sure.

As @Larry Im mentioned, the low-hanging fruit (absentee owners) are getting tons of mail.

The only hang up you may run into is the appraisal.

Looking for a brokerage in Indy where I can hang my license.

So hanging the 100K carrot in front of them was like hanging an extra Million dollars for them to go lend out and earn interest on.This also gave us our money back to use else where quickly. 

If you hang out there just walk around like you are checking out the property and if anyone asks you about the property have a "conversation" but do not tell anyone there you are the owner (Except of course the showing agent) 

I'm not a programmer by any means, and it seems a little bit daunting at first, but I got into it when I got the hang of it.