The hardest part is getting in when you have no track record.I would love to hear any feedback on your experiences with hard money lenders that have an easy entry point and are good to work with, especially for newbies.I may be new, but I'm serious about my financial future. 

This is usually a 2-step process. 1. pull a list of people likely to want to sell their home. 2. append phones and email to that list where available.You can work with a list broker to walk you through and make recommendations for your target.Please note that "loan balance" is not public data and the only sources that do have it are credit score companies and there are a lot of legal restriction around selling the data.

City data and census data are a great place to start for general market data.

And while we can make assumptions and analyze data, there is no way to actually predict the future of the market.

I was wondering what everyone uses to gather crime data on areas?

@Nicole Harrington those areas you named should definitely have some SFRs with value to be added and a better barrier to entry than closer to the perimeter (depending on your budget).

Keep studying any BP data you can find here on the site.

You won't figure this out from Costar or Zillow or most other data sources. 

If you buy mostly off-market you'll get zero commission, so a major factor for you will be if you plan to shop mostly via the MLS (which can be a good strategy especially for SFH where the data tends to be better quality). 

These are two markets that aren't at all comparable.However, your cost of entry, and management will be easier for a Poconos location.