I live 40 miles away, so I called the owner of the biggest plumbing co in the city and he and 2 techs dropped everything to get to the property within 10 minutes of my call.I had put a garage outdoor access remote on the outside of the house.. they couldn't get in thru that because THE POWER WAS NOW OFF.Luckily i had put a coded door knob on the kitchen door that opens to the deck-- i gave them the code and they were inside instantly.The water heater was STILL SPEWING WATER full blast in a stream so strong it was hitting the second story ceiling and hitting the ELECTRICAL PANEL also located in the garage and that's what had knocked out the power .The plumbers immediately turned off the inside water main cutoffand sent me photos of the EMERGENCY SITUATION the pm so calmly let me know about by email an hour earlier.i fired the pm co that instant and got on the phone to STATE FARM (my HOMEOWNERS/rental policy dwelling ins co) all whiledriving an hour to the property.i also called the city's best WATER EMERGENCY REMEDIATION COMpany while en route.When i got there, the water was turned off ( finally)the drywall ceiling had fallen in, the light fixtures destroyed, the garage door opener plastic case was HALF FULL OF WATER and there were 1000s of mold blooms on every surface and hundreds of stacks of spiky growing black mold (looked like iron fiilings we used to play with in that game we all had as kids where u use a magnet and drag the iron filings around to put hair and a mustache on the bald guy cartoon photo) the mold spikes were 1.5" tall on the wood railings and stairs going into the house, on all of my beautiful built in wooden garage shelves--- what a mess-- like the streets of Beirut after the bombs went off.and I don't have allergies -- but i could not even STAND inside the garage because the WET MOLD MILDEW SMELL was so strong it instantly gagged me and gave me a headache and i couldn't breathe.So here we are on Jan 17 and now i know that the BEST rental dwelling policy does NOT COVER MOLD REMEDIATION AT ALL ( so far $14,000) but it does cover water damage with a $2500 deductible...

@Ron Boling might be able to shed some more light on the prices down here in Fall River.

It has a mixture of smaller older homes, and bigger homes on land, not much retail, but hugs Celina which is booming retail, and the housing growth in Celina is mostly in the Prosper ISD, Light Farms, Mustang Lakes, Creek of Legacy, no homes under 300K in those developments.  

Buyer has X Days to perform tests and X additional days to provide seller written proof of the defects they want fixed. they have X additional Days to come to an agreement.If you have something in E where it says "Contractor friend to perform walk through at buyers discretion" or some such legal mumbo jumbo you would be fine.Going back, my responsibility as an agent is to my client and if my seller had an offer and we negotiated 10K EMD, and the buyer put a bunch of stuff down that they saw (paint this railing, switch this light cover, chip in paint on handrail) and they wanted 6K credit.

@Chase Steven Barber For a light rehab, somewhere in the 60-65K range, but that would depend on the rehab...

A $300K+ rehab is nothing to take lightly.

Each time we have gone into our next house, we have taken on a little more, ie learning about tenants, or light rehab and then on into full rehab.  

I've made a decent living over my brief investing career in Austin, but I've warned many out of state investors to the same thing that @Jay Hinrichs mentioned, which is that we have no state income tax here, which means that our property taxes are astronomical to make up for it.If you live here, it's immaterial, but if you live in a state with income tax, you're essentially getting taxed twice (and yes, I'm aware of (some) of the complexities of cross-state earnings and how they're taxed).

Can anyone familiar with these type of transactions, specifically in the Sacramento, CA area, shed some light on how you go about compiling a mailing list for Probate properties?

I have house that needs a good carpet cleaning as well as some light repair work where there are some bunched spots.