I don’t have their secret sauce but :You could do a small direct mail campaign with personalized material (since there really aren’t as many multi family deals) arriving on 5th of the month when payments could be pressing and rents past due to a list of landlords with recent evictions, liens, and possibly with out of town owners.Essentially it’s putting yourself in the shoes of how you might have sell something discounted and off market and then reverse engineering the ways you can identify that scenario.

I have run numbers in this market thousands of times and the secret sauce is how much you can make and keep on your rental revenue. 100% cash expect a 2-3% cash on cash return first year, no tax benefits assumed.

Not looking for specifics or to steal your "secret sauce".

@Joseph Ball what would we ever do without the gurus telling us that we can't do it without them and their secret sauce?

That's the secret sauce. 

Not only did we get lost in the sauce, but I ended up making some bad decisions which ultimately led to me quitting.

I myself don't waste time with newbies when I got my list and know exactly how fast my contact will execute and what they want.And as in all industries there's rotten tomatoes at the bottom however I hope that more are ripe than rotten but a lot of them are spoiled and lazy

I've given up on actually figuring out the answer at the moment lol so let me know if you find the secret sauce. 

On top of that you will find the PDX metro area one of the 10 ten toughest markets in the country to find wholesale deals .. if your long term buy and hold and will pay going rate no problem. but if you think you can learn some secret sauce to compete against the locals and get great deals .. then I will dissuade you of that notion.

There is no secret sauce.