Screening enabled me to find great long-term tenants that treat my property as if it were their own.Yes, it requires due diligence upfront, but ultimately pays off exponentially in the long-run.

So asset management is a strategic role enabling a solid return on the lifecycle of the individual investment, and portfolio management is concerned more broadly with asset allocation and risk management.

@Stephanie PotterThat's very informative, thanks for sharing the latest revision on FHA guidelines, as well as the link.I may be wrong but if I follow your math on the last bullet correctly, an FHA down-payment required, may include 3.5% + 1.75% (upfront MIP), thus, lender financing up to 94.75  vs 5% down-payment conventional enabling a 95% financing.

There are several different ones available including:Absentee Owners with Equity, Seniors with long-time Ownership and Owners with Low Financial Stability Scores (FSS)Once you have the list, the second step is to then run the owner name and mailing address up with a national telephone (and email) database.

I am not a lawyer but when I was looking into it in Illinois I found three steps helpful:1) Check with your states secretary of state they have online tools to search their databases 2) Check the DBAs (Doing business as) this is where a business or partnership takes on a separate/assumed business name.  3) US Trademark Office the USPTO also has their own database checker so you can see that no one has trademarked your name or something too similar. 

I’d suggest areas where you have at least 2-exit strategies enabling you to cash flow or flip for profit.

This has been a career shift for me and I don't have a database of contacts.

Search their online database for crimes in the area.

I do see the piracy issue, seems like copywritten materials, movies, songs or print could be encoded somehow and when downlloaded could be checked against a data base and if it didn't pass, the stuff would just smoke or not play.

So as an agent, access to the largest single data base of deals is right at my finger tips.