I do have a few single-family homes rented out.

Even Virtual Wholesalers.Some say they are simply a middle man and provide no value.I think a middle man provides the a necessary function.

Not to mention it would be so much less of a headache and so much less time and energy invested on your behalf, plus much less exposure to risk, easier to manage etc. to just buy a single multifamily for $800k in a good location with strong underlying fundamentals. 

You can house hack a single family or multi.

This is 100% top advice to think about - each state (and sometimes, often municipality/city) will have different processes, rules and yields for this - it is a very location-specific strategy and have to hyper-focus on a local market (more even for the rules/process than the real estate knowledge) to have success

Even if you can track down their bank accounts, you can file the garnishment once and collect whatever is in the account.

If I did have a vacant house even with the old system, I always tried to work with the owner when they wanted to redeem.

I found it really time consuming to measure for every single repair in a house so automated calcs as much as I could based on room sizes.  

I even called a city inspector who had been through the house and got an idea of internal condition. 

Even though the seller may not have signed yet with the realtor, evidently he trusts the realtor more than he trusts you.