Mother in law a VP of a Title Company,  neighbor is a Broker,  I have plumbing and contractor connection, and a wife that has incredible insight for home interior! 

There are tons of tools and talk to your Broker and colleagues about the pros and cons to what they use.  

If you changed paths and went to a different industry, then you need 12 months according to my mortgage broker.

I have not really heard any bad stories about, in fact it has been the opposite, apparently their property management company is great and their customer service is really good.

I am a broker and an investor.

The way listing a home typically works: - Seller Broker signs a listing agreement with Seller. - Seller agrees to pay 6% commission to Seller Broker. - Seller Broker places the home on the MLS and offers Buyer Brokers half of the commission (3%) for finding Buyer. 

The  association I'm in has a program we use that has these properties already listed there but in the South Florida area.But for you.....I read in the book Wholesaling Bible, "To get a pre-foreclosure list you have two options: (1) you can put the list together by going down to your local county government office and searching for and finding the recent lis pendens or notice of default findings; or (2) you can buy the list from a pre-foreclosure list provider/broker."

I'm in the process of getting my real estate license in Oregon. My main goal (initially) is to be my own agent to buy and sell investment properties. I'll eventually venture into buying/selling properties for others, ...

Try a Mortgage broker, they could find you a lender as well. 

Irony of ironies that folks using hard money loans are paying for their own possible foreclosure, but this is also the reason that frequent repeat customers of a hard money lender typically pay less in points as the relationship progresses.