a good realtor can pull a list of absentee owners for you in yor area. in my county i can go to rent court and look at the owners filing for eviciton/rent court and get their information. that's 1 way to compile it. same with probates, tehre's the register of wills. as far as vendors, the cost is relative to your budget. there are companies like site-x data, and first american realty solutions and haines who provide data and you can pull a list from there. another popular vendor to pull lists from is melissadata.

If they do that where you live, an agent should be able to pull that data for you.Very eventually, it will appear in the public records.

Also, if the city has the national chains, like CB or Remax, many times one of those will have data on listings nationwide, where you click on a map which state you want.

I have heard of Courthouse Retrial System and Chandler Reports.My current method of deriving this data is not easy and not always up to date.Thanks, :D

I check the data against what the others have said to make sure they are in the normal range and not just irrationally optimistic.

Try searching for media price data that covers from (at least) 6/07 until now.

Joshua, I think it is a terrific idea as it will be a big 2010 topic since everyone can transfer funds from a traditional to a ROTH IRA and eveyone should start thinking about it.

You can alos contact some local property managers as they would give you their opinion as to the rental value of your property and they also have comp data.

Is it difficult to acquire properties and then transfer them to an LLC at a later date?

Once I get leads in from my website and go through the best leads for example, job transfer needing to move, 2 payments behind, and they indicate that their flexible on terms.So when I contact them to confirm what they have indicated their either wanting cash out or kind of skeptical about someone coming in and taking over on payments even though they have indicated that they are flexible on terms.