There are so many apartments constructed or under construction I'm not sure how they could ever find enough renters without turning to section 8 or some other government program.

In fact, that's how the government thinks about it.

They have longstanding links to the local fire department, police, and municipal government.

Your best bet would be to contact the governing authorities directly in the geographic market you are interesting in purchasing your first property.  

BRB's books and electronic products point the way to over 28,000 government agencies, and 3,500 public record vendors who maintain, search or retrieve public records.For what I can see, at least for Florida, you can find property taxes information for all Florida counties.

There is the wild card of government intervention, which you pointed out.My point was that as a first investment, making an appreciation-only play is ill-advised.

---------------------Consider the bigger picture and you run into the fact that the federal government can print money, localities cannot print money, and therefore fed debt save for inflation expectations is irrelevant when analyzing state/local debt.

I might have missed something on the government site.I know that in the UK, the regulator there, the FCA, has a path which allows a non-accredited investor (the UK term: restricted retail) to progress to accredited (the UK term: sophisticated).

BRB's books and electronic products point the way to over 28,000 government agencies, and 3,500 public record vendors who maintain, search or retrieve public records.For what I can see, at least for Florida, you can find property taxes information for all Florida counties. 

I really like the idea of live in fix and flip or the use of an government backed loan or 203k for repairs.