In my opinion, the best use of your time would be talking with investor-friendly agents and commercial brokers, explaining your criteria and actively following up with them.

Do you set up short term leases and have a walk through or assessment?

To better assess the expense items in a market is there a specific reference or website you use?

Hi all,        I've been actively looking for real estate agents and met several of them and seems like they're not the one's that I can build a long term relationship with because they haven't worked with too many investors or builders.

I'm an active investor from CO looking into New Orleans area.  

Almost half of my portfolio has Section 8 tenants in it and as non section 8 people move out i try to move in more Section 8 tenants but i make sure my property manager screens them THOROUGHLY....not with just what's on paper regarding credit report, income and past criminal activity (If any).....I make sure my PM screens to make sure they have no pets, no evictions, no smoking OF ANY KIND and no felonies and we still get TONS of people calling...the biggest problem becomes picking someone from who is left.   

And do the regulators regularly assess large fines for non-life threatening non-compliance issues?

There are 2 open active funds in the marketspace.

I actively own properties in both areas.  

Consider weather issues (hurricanes and tropical storms) and sinkhole activity (Pinellas, Pasco, Hillsborough, and others are high on the list of sinkhole activity).