When looking for an ideal location, can anyone share their strategies and what tools you use to research neighborhoods you're not familiar with?  

Ideally all our guests would be able to do would be to be able to switch between pool mode and spa mode, and change the water temperature to within a range we have predefined. 

The last thing you want to do is to buy somewhere you think you want to live only to find out 6mon-1yr later that at best its not ideal or at worst its terrible. where we rented when we first moved here was a nice neighborhood in a not so great area, so while the home and neighbors were great I still had to worry about my wife going to the grocery store etc. by herself in the evening hours.

In the next year, I would like to purchase my first property (ideally, a single-family or duplex).

My partner and I deal directly with the seller. 

yes I could, but it would not be ideal in my area.

It's a good one, which protects the seller 1,000%.Oh and for the length, 24 months is ideal... any less, and you're setting your buyer up for failure.

I deal with enough new and experienced investors to understand what damage such a silly statement could actually make.

I've been collecting info on direct mail prospect in excel but its a pain in the "tookus" let's cal it to add to that data and then recall only certain line items that match the criteria i'd like to mail to.Hopefully by tinkering around with access I'll be able to build a simple-yet-effective database.A cloud-based CRM/Database would be ideal, huh?

Most of those listing there are probably not going to take much less than market value so it may not be the best for what an investor is trying to achieve (at least, as @Bill Coleman mentioned, it's not ideal here in Denver).