@jon Minerick offers the service in my area.  

I might not be well-versed in your market, but that does sound quite extreme.

Lacking the capital and building experience to develop it ourselves, we want to offer the backyard as a "Developer Special" on the MLS.We’d rather not risk demolishing our home at the front of the lot.

The Prescott quad city area is bigger than Sedona, with more to offer in the way of jobs and education:  Prescott is more expensive, 500 ft higher so has more snow and trees, but still very dry with the current drought. 

Also, there are tons of home-grown (free, shared) calculators other investors have created if you Google for "Investment Property Calculator".Analyzing The Deals - You, the investor, need to put on your blinders and practice underwriting (running the numbers) before you jump into a competitive offer scenario, or getting too far in front of your skiis with an off-market deal.  

What other Midwest city has as much investment planned as Detroit, yet offers such affordable real estate investments?

It is very hard to tell if we are getting paid all we are due. (3) I have been told they are more setup to handle extremely low-income areas, which doesn’t exactly describe the properties we have.They have been so unbelievably incompetent on the whole, it has made my wife and I consider just selling our properties and getting out.

Thanks in advance for any insights and guidance you can offer!

Once you gain traction and get some deals the good news is you can hire a VA to at least to the initial calls for you (less no's) and you only talk to the ones interested in your offer (I know it because I run a call center for Real Estate).Mailers can also work, in that case interested sellers reach out to you, mailers can be expensive though so its also a numbers game.

This is making it difficult finding insurance carriers willing to offer a policy.