My best bet would be before making an offer etc to look up the properties and get a quick search of the headaches before right?

I would be willing to bet this!

That said, I bet there are incredible deals to be had potentially in the city neighborhoods and definitely in the more stable suburbs as well and given my family connections I believe it's an area we could potentially do well.

You bet.

When I arrived at the job on Monday, I see an open garage door and about 5 thousand dollars worth of tools just sitting there with the light on, ( i bet that looked wierd all night long in the culdesac for 3 solid nights.)

I would be willing to bet that you probably wont be able to sell any properties to those guys until you build a relationship with them.

While I think we are still in for a bumpy ride REI is a good bet.

This kind of building I'd bet would be cheaper to build than to buy an existing building to convert.

I'd venture to bet that in 5 years the bulks of what the funds are all scooping up will all find there way back to the market.

I learned the game from watching others pay to play.naturally I had to start betting and after many dollars I decided to actually study some and get my money back,I started winning and thought I was the new bobby fischer (this was in the early 70's) I played in the chess clubs in junior high ranked 1600's broke 1700 several times.Quit for years then In the 80's brother in law got me back into the game.He was betting $20 to a $1000 a game and losing and wanted me to try :)So I had to relearn the game We both joined two chess clubs I was ranked #3 in one and# 5 in the other .Selection of who you got to play was picked by computer that was BS and if I won against certain people match was not counted.