The postcards that are returned are going to be people that the general public doesn't have access to because their data provider obviously did not provide that data.

The public figure said, 'first time in 35 years anything like this has happened."  

The latter, while resulting in high %, tells nothing about the health of the investment as it relates to health of the cash flows.In this way, CCR is a very bad indicator when taken on its own and out of context...  

@Craig Brooksby UBTI is documented in IRS publication 598.  

Do you want to be close to public transportation, do you need parking, do you want to walk to restaurants, entertainment, or take a short cab ride...?  

A little bit about myself for anyone interested:I'm looking to be a buy-and-hold investor while continuing my regular job - I am looking to put money to work and would be potentially interested in doing so as part of someone else's deal; I would consider both SFR and MFR deals.I am an investor in my day job (currently private equity / buyouts, soon to become public equities) so may have some bad habits, or at least industry-specific ones, to break; I generally anticipate being relatively analytical / systematic in looking at dealsMy family held a few properties when I was growing up - I have experience personally doing refurbishing work and secondhand experience with property management activities (this will hopefully help me as contextual information, I don't anticipate taking on an active role in refurb or property management in the near future)Right now, I am trying to educate myself on the process of deal sourcing (MLS, wholesaler buyer lists, etc.) and market data sources; in particular, I would really appreciate any input on good sources for publicly available market-level data in manipulable format such as Excel or .csv as well as input from anyone who uses a systematic deal-screening approach both on their criteria and how they get reliable / quality data into a screening-friendly formatThanks for everything people have already contributed. 

Hi @Craig - would you mind answering publicly so everyone in the Forum can benefit from your knowledge?

Some counties have addopted the position that it is prohibited by statute to furnish public records for "commercial use". 

CPAs are licensed by state but aren't generally restricted from practicing in different states unless they are performing public accounting services (think audits).

See IRS Publication 590: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p590.pdf Therefore her IRA is prohibited from enaging in any transaction with you.