From my experience, if you are willing take on the challenges and bigger rehabs, you will be better off as most of the bigger investors/cash players and flippers are not touching those.

If you're just starting out, pursue cities where big players aren't competing, like Richmond and Wilmington de.

It remains to be seen how this all plays out for Blackrock and the other big players.

As the small player there is no low hanging fruit.

In the survival of the fittest only big players could survive.

In my experience I almost got scammed by a big player, oftened recommended on these forums.  

I am currently a College Baseball player for Indiana University and will be graduating this spring.

Once they are fully foreclosed on they become Real Estate Owned ( REO )There are plenty of topics and threads on here to get you to Compilers...but they can be tough to break into unless you can get an intro.Do all you can to stay away from chains more than 2 deep, ie Owner/Buyer and 2 brokers/agents... and even then get one or two of the brokers out of the way by all signing a NDNC agreement and Fee agreement that protects everyone and then put the two real players together.

Lots of good small brokerages here and bigger players as well.

@Mark Vieira   you will always have the bigger players at the auctions... they are the one's that have been doing it 10 20 years or longer the one's that come and go are the newbies..