The tenant used to mail her payments and sometimes hand deliver them to my home....which I absolutely wanted to discourage (yes, I need another method for this). 

You can do owner financing and get a downpayment as a method of putting some cash back in your hand.  

Now I have plenty of methods of gathering contacts, I have lots of family and family friends who I could honestly probably have as contacts so that's not the issue.

Unless you run into a situation where The seller is heavily distressedYou got really luckyTons of repairs are needed and nobody else wants to deal with doing them you aren't going to get anyone to sell to you at 80 cents on the dollar.I believe when Brandon discusses this method he always talks about doing lots of repairs, this is your number 1 & 3 from above.

Me personally, I love the BRRR method considering that you already have loans etc. in place on the property and could use the new capital to expand and gain other rents monthly while growing the long term portfolio.

Hello,  Were you able to discover an efficient method for finding owners based on a list of addresses? 

Hi,So I am digging into the seller financing option since it seems like a very effective method for getting in with little money down and not having to deal with banks.Something I am wondering about, is if the seller financing option works like a regular loan where you can refinance and just pay off the principal at any point. 

What other methods do you have?  

If there was a method of collecting rent online that didn't require me to send out invoices and didn't cost a bunch (I currently pay $.50/ payment for processing) I might change tactics.  

You can correct this oversight by filing a form 3115 with your tax return which will allow you to correct all of the past errors at once and establish the correct method going forward.File an extension for 2016, send in a little money if you usually owe with your extension request and get thee to a competent real estate focused CPA.