What you say makes a lot of sense.There are so many nuances as to how to get into REI I think your fairly simple approach should work well and give me time to do the research as I ease into this.

Linking up with someone locally who's doing that business would be a good approach.

That is a tough question, ask the people in foreclosure who decided to do a deal why they chose who they did, I'm not kidding.I tried different things over my career but a straight friendly honest approach worked best.

I feel really awkward about discussing it with the tenants upstairs, because they've been really nice to me and I'm not sure if I should rat to the landlord about it because they might feel that I should have approached them first.

If you catch these before the property goes to auction to pay the lien, you could have some potential motivated sellers so I see nothing wrong with such an approach.

I was planning on contacting some of the owners in order to see if they are looking to sell or work out some sort of deal.Unfortunately for me this is coming at one of the worst times as I am about to have the majority of my liquid assets tied up in a purchase that is in the process to close….taking forever going on 4 months since the initial offer.Besides the aforementioned research I have approached my banks to see if I may be able to apply for a general pre-approval for a maximum amount so that if I was to jump on a deal I could get the financing hammered out in the time before final payment is due (waiting for a call back).

I have been approached by a good government based tenant on their interest in the building.

Your "find out the properties that are in pre-foreclosure call the owners and make an offer" approach, while technically correct, is very hard to execute.

So after I came down from the clouds I am trying to figure the best strategy to approach this situation.

The numbers are below.monthly income 8,400 at 100% occupancymonthly expenses 2,200 including taxes, insurance, water and sewer.I have read Mike Rossi's book and like his approach to expenses being 50% of gross rents when analyzing a property.