The biggest thing that I am finding difficult is contacting the owners.  

Don't get me wrong, investing in-state or out of state does not come without difficulties etc.  

And to explain the reaction of the community to your initial post, you would probably have difficulty believing how many newbies these forums get on a weekly basis that are dying to quit their jobs immediately, IMMEDIATELY so they can go on to what they believe is the easier money and shorter hours of real estate investing.

Just thought it would be interesting to hear first hand from investors during that time where you were at prior to the crash (property pricing, difficulty in obtaining good deals, market saturation, etc and what happened once the crash came, how you survived or thrived during this and then how you did when everything started to come back up.

People underestimate the difficulty of doing those smaller deals.

By far my biggest concern is the difficulty of managing properties from such a l-o-n-g distance.

I have a side outpatient practice and am currently in the process of setting up the business entity properly, and I am always happy to talk about food/nutrition/health topics if anyone wants to shoot me any questions or comments.After I stumbled onto Bigger Pockets a little over a month ago I've been inhaling the podcasts (almost 100 working backwards), blog posts, and have made it through a couple of real estate books by now and have started analyzing deals in the area to get practice, scheduled my first REIA meetup for this week, and have just started reaching out to people looking for CPA's and Attorneys to get more info and advice on really getting into this.  

They have the original will and the notorized death certificate, but are having difficulties getting answers from the county.  

Im attempting to pull the comps now but I am having a few difficulties. 

Second, improve the property in order to increase rent rates and meet your Cash Flow goal.The Refinance phase is where the difficulty comes with combining these strategies.