If you want to look up dozens or hundreds of properties, be prepared to (essentially) pay someone's assistant their overtime hourly wage. 

I do know for a fact that hundreds if not thousands of big corporate companies like Blackstone ( which own 20% or more of the residential homes in Sacramento) and others have purchased millions of residential properties when the market crashed.

I know there are hundreds of books and blogs with useful information and I will try to consume as much as possible but what are practical steps to get into the game.

., the money isn't going to be sitting there when you get back as it turns out that borrowing several hundred thousand dollars requires active participation on your part and you will realistically only be able to e-sign things while away, but you could/should be able to submit the basic paperwork, do a 60 or 90 day rate lock to get the BREXIT interest rate pricing that's still present but could go away at any time, go on your trip prepared to e-sign things from your laptop, designate someone other than yourself to host the appraisal (can't be your loan originator; rules), come back to a conditional loan approval waiting for you (it'll have things that require more than just e-signing), fulfill conditions, sign loan docs (signing that 100+ pages must be in person, notarized, and ink-signatures), fund loan, go on your merry way. 

So the other day I'm out driving for dollars in a new neighborhood and every few hundred feet they have neighborhood watch signs posted.

The 5 items referenced above are items you can do right now and for less than a few hundred dollars (books and REIN membership).I agree with @Devan Mcclish on the yellow letters.

But out of the several hundred emails I sent I found several really decent deals.

You'd only save maybe a few hundred bucks, certainly less than 1$k.  

There are always hundreds, or thousands of homes for sale depending where you live. 

I failed hundreds of times while improving.