You can try and the worst thing you may here is "Go away".Some states consider intervening in pre-foreclosure to be predatory and have laws against it, but ASKING is not intervening.

Get a pre-approval loan letter and put it in with your offers if you have to.  

I found a lot of pre-forclosures and I wanted to know if anyone has experience with contacting attorneys and / or distressed owners.

If you are going to be financing get a pre-approval letter that you can send a copy of it with your offers.  

I have found one actually in a yard pointing to a house that says pre foreclosure.

Roll up your sleeves make calls, read statistics, talk to the locals, get crime stats, and learn the market.3.

I live in the Hartford area of CT and up until learning about the BRRRR strategy on BP, have really only been focused on an owner occupied Multifamily (3 or 4 units) as I was pre-approved for 5% down up to 275k (more when 75% of property income factored).

Find out why seller is selling, ask for a rent roll, what repairs or updating of mechanicals and roof has been done, how long seller has owned the property, are there pets allowed, are taxes current, has there been any insurance claims where seller did not use money for the repairs, ask for sellers disclosure, are there separate water and electric meters, does rent include utilities or not, are there long term leases or month to month, does deposits transfer to new owner, if there is pets, is the deposit a fee or deposit.

Any contributions to pre-paid escrows for property taxes or homeowners insurance are not expensed and are not added to your tax basis for the property.  

Make sure you understand the difference between investing in capital assets vs other types of investment and the difference in using pre-tax vs post-tax retirement accounts.