They're smaller, tend to be on long, skinny lots (for a while most cities charged property tax on how many feet of street access you had, so you had a lot of long, skinny lots), and are in older areas of town.You can also find out the years properties were built by checking out the county records, or other means of snooping on one's neighbors- like http://www.city-data.com/, which is a good, free resource to get demographics of an area, and you can also go up and down streets (in my city at least) and find out what the tax records say- bedrooms, bathrooms, tax appraised value, all that good stuff.There's lots of places and tools to get that information, but that's one of the sites I use a lot.

The fund is just a tool and is one element of our overall picture.

Two other RE agents never called me back.Can anyone spoon feed me some tips on finding, interviewing, and selecting an ethical real estate professional?

You'll find a lot threads about analyzing multifamily.This a great site to get educated.In addition to the above, valuing properties based on cap rates is an important tool.

Cash flow and equity are both tools.

Townsend - thanks for the tip.

Google is great to look up email addresses and phone numbers, Facebook another great "research" tool.

Keep it up and thanks for sharing the tip.

But I wanted to post that tip in case someone else comes across this thread while looking for help tracking down old liens.

I recently purchased a useful tool for use in the care of my five single family homes.