1st thing you want to do is narrow your focus.

Warren....the crack in your photo is almost certainly 'structural' since it starts out narrow and becomes wider toward it's upper termination.

Consider conducting more research into what those areas may be and create criteria to narrow your search.

That is the way I've seen it structured before.Like I said I am very new to real estate investing, so I am trying to narrow down what market I would like my first purchase to be in.

There's a big difference for you and an investor, This will determine if someone buying today will be coming from an investor pool or an end-user Owner Occupant pool. 1) Possible scenarios not listed is you may accidently come across someone trying to place 1031 money last minute and will do the deal.2) You have two distinct groups of property, 7 of them are Class A/B+, and 9 of them are Class B-/C, maybe you sell the B-/C properties to the investor community in bulk which would be easier if you didn't have the Class A/B- properties that won't make any investor any money, just sell the higher class 5-7 properties to OO's.

I am curious as to what criteria, if any, is used when researching realtors and narrowing down a good fit.

Since you're investing out of state, the latter is not exactly feasible for you, unless you plan to narrow down your search to one area and frequent it.

We may e able to help a bit more if you narrow down what you're looking to do.

@Jeff maybe you can Air B and B

What distinguishes an A from a B and a B from a C?