It would certainly be helpful to have someone do the upfront leg work.

Some of your competition may only be pulling data from a paid service every few weeks, so I'd say you have somewhat of a leg up.

I'm not putting down what some of these coaching programs have to offer ( ok some of them I would lol) but if you have the money to get a leg up on the learning curve great.

You can identify up to three properties at the 45-day mark post closing your down leg and then chose from any combination of that to satisfy the 1031.  

The way I learned it was to try to do deals up to the point I had to put money in: if they still had legs at that point, and I had the people on the team I needed, I'd send the money and take it on.

If you’re willing to go into lower income areas, with some leg-work you can find a decent turn-key home for $40-50k, already leased for $600-$750.

Today at 74 years old I am an auctioneer and still attend public auctions for residential and commercial real estate, I always do an extensive inspection and comps of all the sales and preview before the auction so that I have a leg up on the competition. 

Do your own property management, get to know local repairmen that won't charge you an are and a leg, have the resources to fix up your properties to help eliminate vacancies.  

My advice: since you are new at this, you should probably stick to more conventional methods until you get your sea legs, so to speak.

I'm not sure when this article was written but I must say that from what we see globally, including Memphis, Real Estate is Not at 30 years low.There are always areas that are legging behind,while in the last 3-4 years most RE Markets experience reasonable growth, having Wall Street jumping in probably contributed to RE recovery we seeing now.