I am a skeptical penny-pincher by nature, and imagine the market in California may offer its own unique set of challenges in real estate.If I have to choose which types of investing interest me so far, they would be buy and hold, and possibly rehabbing.

When you see a couple panel vans pull up real fast, that is when you may start to worry about the area.

Hi Andrew,If you're familiar with such things, pull the previous owners deed, the foreclosed mortgage, and the foreclosure docs.

i hear on one of the podcast few months ago that you can pull a absentee list from MLS and i have trying to find that blog or forum, can any one help!!!

The "Distressed" market as a whole, including detroit, is below 20% right now REO & SS combined, in the markets mentioned above, I haven't pulled it, but I'd guess it's under 5%, maybe even under 3%.

I realize most investors get involved with that but it's done after closings and the on samples pulled thereafter.

I'm a member of 3 Atlanta area REIAs.Can't agents pull statistics of days on market and number of sales etc from an area?

If you feel good about the local area, I'd pull the trigger on that deal all day long.

Showings were going ok but either nobody I wanted was pulling the trigger or else the people that did pull the trigger just didn't fit what I wanted there (income, job history, etc).It was a week before xmas and somebody asked me about doing a 6 month lease.

You can use a list provider like Listsource to get you a list of absentee owners or if you have MLS access you can pull the list yourself.