Its burgeoning middle class was the model of the world with excellent public schools and universities.

As a professional "analyst" and operations manager, I develop statistical real estate investment models in Excel. 

It sounds like you have found your and are excelling.

Excellent point and I agree with that..

I can tell after reading some of the blogs and listening to a podcast that bigger pockets is an excellent place to be if you want to be involved in REI.

The web site is something that I can afford to have done so I can continue doing more important tasks to find deals.Mailers, answering the phone, wife 4 kids, mow lawn, part time job, driving for dollars, podio, probate listings, Excel files, chess, video games, $$$, call leads, oil change, eat, sleep, breath, omg kid again, twice in one night, how is that even possible. lol Yea you know the drill.          

BP has excellent tools and calculators to help you decide if a property is going to cash flow or not.

There's no magic way to track expenses-- use excel.

Nothing has changed.Your choices include:Pulling files yourself and entering the data in a database or Excel filePaying someone else to do the above for youFind a data list provider An alternative to looking for probates is to market for other characteristics and deal with the probates as they come.

As everyone has mentioned this is a great place to start and an excellent source for networking.