Then the trick becomes finding motivated sellers.  

Gives me more motivation to self-manage.

These are not typical flips or buy&hold properties and will cost MUCHO to restore, so carefully evaluate you motives for even thinking of them and be sure you have a viable exit(one that works for your the seller & the buyer) plan BEFORE you even make your offer.

Generally when people are looking for alternatives to the market norms then they are selling deal that aren't sellable.Zero Down Lenders aren't as good.If a lender is offering a Zero Down Payment option then they may be offering terms that really aren't as competitive and they may even have some other motive.

Son finds home from motivated home seller and buys a $100,000 property worth $150k.

One way that I've heard to weed out motivated sellers from no so motivated sellers is to ask them WHY they're selling.

Remember that the motivation for developers and other intermediaries is to get paid out of a transaction, they are less likely to be thinking about how to reduce the risk to us investors and that needs to be our job.

it is hard to make new contacts and start over, especially in a market like this, finding motivation can be difficult, but here i go.any way i hope to learn a lot and meet others.

I want to get an idea for motivation early on, but don't want to come on overly aggressive.

I found very motivated homeowners who had a previous expired listing.