Most retail buyers have an agent who finds them houses and drives them around.

I have put out bandit signs, but most of the areas in Baltimore City where you can put bandit signs and have them stay up for more than 1 day are not fun areas to be at, I mean I don't mind driving through them, but I don't like getting out :)My other options I looked into and liked are Probate, and code violation marketing, as well as NOO.

I would build in a buffer for taxes to play it safe.

I’m going to start driving around some areas to get a feel for the neighborhoods.

Be very careful with this though, if you have shorter term financing like I do prepare for a down turn, I have no idea how much values fluctuate in your market, and if your note need to be renewed in a down market, you better have enough equity, or a pile of cash to bring in, I have seen many investors collapse because they harvested too much equity, I limit my portfolio to 40% LTV, im running about 35% on 21 properties right now, so i feel pretty safe, I was through the last crash and saw some guys i thought had it figured out crash and burn, just a word of warning. 

The renter basically stopped maintaining the yard and if you arent doing a drive by regularly you won’t know.

I took a drive by the two properties of interest and know the area well but the judgment is roughly 20% of the market value of the properties.

Last week I was driving for dollars.

Wouldn’t you agree that being able to drive to his first property in 2 hours rather than spend $1000 on a trip to the Midwest?

I grew up driving by Taliesin every day on my way into school bringing an intense appreciation for architecture.