These are individual investors advertising for motivated sellers.

The only advertising I do is my "seller" site.

The small business people think it's yellow pages and TV advertising and flyer.

it also takes time to advertise and screen new tenants.

You've got to have a little funds for advertising at least.

I just hope you didn't see someone advertising that.

Direct mail, door knocking, bandit signs, advertising, etc. -- these are all good methods of finding people who are ready to sell, but haven't yet taken the step of listing their house.

Yep, just advertise as a trendy "Florida house" right there in Indiana.

So, I have spent a little extra $'s on the Nest products with an Internet On The Go hot spot device in each home.The thermostat looks great...but does not bring in additional revenue : ( It does allow me to advertise the "smart" device though : ) And it also allows me to control the thermostat remotely if the the property became vacant.Their other product, the Nest Protect (co/smoke detectors), allows me to see if the batteries are still working in the units remotely and can get a notice if an alarm goes off.

I'm in the metro Los Angeles area where housing is not so affordable and there's not great value or ROI on investment properties for buy and hold.I too am in SoCal, so for those of us that live in an expensive market (like California, New York, New Jersey, etc) we are sometimes "forced" to invest out-of-state in order to get favorable cash-flow and rates of return.There are many great markets around the U.S. to choose from where you can get double-digit cap rates, and property values are between $50,000 to $100,000.