You Can do it yourself, by searching the online records and making a chart of mtgs/liens and when they were recorded which ones were satisfied, etc. to determine their priority, but it can be tricky.You will likely miss a recording where the borrower name was misspelled, when searching by name, but it it is still valid.I've seen mtg.s with a different legal description/subdivision shown on the search results page, but it was in fact the same property (the actual recorded mtg legal description showed XZY subdivision, formerly known as abc subdivision).Unrecorded hoa debts won't show up, but you still inherit them....same with unrecorded code violations/utilitiesAlso, the auctions have many buy and hold bidders who will pay more than flippers.....has been that way for years here.

If you haven't had many house showings, it could be based on the house pictures or description on MLS (cluttered, damaged, outdated, old furniture, etc.).

I have 50+ postive reviews on one property alone, far more than anyone in my geographic area, yet I am at the bottom of the search rankings.On the up-side, I'm now receiving $1mm in liability coverage, per booking.

A lot of the homes in the area are sitting around for quite some time too but the agents they hired are doing a horrible job of marketing the homes (cell phone pics, little to no descriptions, pricing high so they can get the listing over other agents).

House hacking would be great but my family has some geographical criteria (school district for my son) that makes that very difficult in my area of the valley.

Nathan Arceneaux This isn't without risk but...find a property manager that you trust and scale around their geographic base.

Based on your description, it sounds like you just want a passive set and forget investment.  

The thing about Florida, as some other states can also relate to, is that every sub-geographic area will completely change the feel/vibe/cost, etc, which in turn will change the demographic/income ratio/quality/value, etc. 

@Erik Nordgaard the midwest is a large geographic area with many different local markets, so I would be careful generalizing the midwest.

@Kieren Gromowski my big concern would be that Manhattan is a small market that is geographically isolated from any other metropolitan market.