Yes it can signal criminals to a vacant home but alot of my applicants come from driving by seeing the sign or someone they know seeing the signI personally leave a light on when I have it vacant.

You driving there and having work held up due to no direction to the subs will cost monet in the long run

Likely a partner who knows this market would have to provide all the funds and would end up driving the deal through disposition, who what value is the finder here?

. - if you do end up with a personal check, you could go to his bank to cash it - no waiting - but this could end up a hassle if you have to drive across town to do it.

If I am in Fla where I don't have mls access and I find a house I am interested in, I will open the zillow app, on my pad and drive the street looking at all the yellow (sold) houses, houses move along on the pad as you drive the street, its a fast and rather fun way to get you in the ball park.

If you have a strong historical capital and rent appreciation rate it might make sense to get into this market and wait for natural rent increases and appreciation to take hold and make for better investments if you wanted to stay local.You could also consider looking for turn-key investments in another city (Indy, Memphis, etc) where the returns could be much better - but the risk without having the ability to drive by the properties could be greater.

Everyone I know who commutes that far is because they like where they live - and they need to drive that far to get to a job.

The inspection upon accepted offer is fairly common in the larger properties.All you can do is submit your offer based on a drive by and what the owner tells you.

Simply by doing a drive by and running comparables this house completely redone can be moved for a easy 175k-200k.

You have to be careful on this because resetting multiple times isn't safe (i.e. don't just keep pushing the button.