As I have frequently wrote about here on BP you are absolutely right.

MLS is broker listings, not owner listings and listing prices are frequently optimistically inflated to please the client. 

Then immediately contact all the cash buyers you just found that buy properties in that neighborhood and tell them about the house and would they be interested in buying it.Once you have done all that with that neighborhood, go to the next one and 'rinse and repeat.'

We are located in the San Diego area, and frequently on the BP page learning from all of you.

Because we’ve built this trust, frequently we get asked the question, “Other than gkhouses, who's the best property manager in Birmingham?”

Off topic, but thought it funny that you might have a temporary assignment out of the area, while we might be temporarily moving to RI (Newport, although my brother's family lived in Narraganset until 4 years ago so visited there frequently) for about a year for my husband's work.

But before you add that expense I would do a quick google check to see if that is frequently a problem in your area.Where are you in the purchase process?

@Ryan Richard : Yep, excellent point, I only focus on the process to where it is repeatable and easy and provides me information of value.

You get what you are willing to pay for and afford, there is no de facto "set price".I'm not saying that agents should never advertise or wouldn't have to if there were fewer (advertising occurs in almost every industry), but that is frequently (including in this thread) cited as a major cost because it's so hard to find clients.Finally, I should say that I'm coming at this as a new agent.

Rinse and repeat.