Reaching owners can be tricky.....mail is easy (you'll have their name and address), but may be limited in effectiveness. 

The Seller grants possession and use to the Buyer in a limited set of rights.  

I like Matthews ideas above, and you may have to limit your scale and take some of the mystery out of it, like with simple buy and holds that pencil out well..

We knew the market was starting to make a comeback from the bottom, and was getting ultra-competitive as big investors were making all-cash offers and inventory was limited.  

Straight out of high school I served in the military and then spent the past 10 years working in IT.I have finally reached a point where I’m tired of working for the corporate industry on a limited salary while doing nothing for my retirement.For the past year I’ve been watching house flipping shows and decided I wanted to give it a try.Six months ago I bought my first house with a 203k loan that I’m currently living in so I could get some experience.I paid $167,500 for the house and took out $35,000 with the 203k.The house was a probate that had been abandoned for 5 years.Half the house was on a concrete slab that had sunk about 4” in the middle and it was completely outdated.We removed 2 load bearing walls to open up the kitchen, knocked out the back wall, built a new subfloor, and put up a 4 panel sliding glass door to let in some sun light.We installed porcelain tile in the kitchen, stainless steel appliances, new cabinets and quartz counters as well as recessed lighting.We fixed the foundation problems by mudjacking to raise the floors and carpeted the back 3 rooms that sat on top of the slab.As you can imagine we ran through the $35,000 quickly.The 2 bathrooms are still outdated and the house needs new siding.After the renovation we had it reappraised (per the 203k loan agreement) and they said it was worth $215,000.About 3 months after the renovation I attended a 3 day Fortune Builders seminar and come to a realization I probably could have saved about $20,000 if I had systems and processes to follow before I purchased the house.After listening to BP podcasts and hear other people’s experiences I’m quite fortunate I didn’t lose money.This sums up my real estate investing experience.

And it limits the risk of damage.At some point, thats the best you can do.

Essentially, you are paying for something you hope you never have to use....but if it does happen, you have multiple parties in your corner fighting off a claim, for many years if needs be, and even if the limits of one were exhausted, you have another...and the legal fees alone could be large, so nice to have the insurers footing that bill and having an interested in settling or disposing of the suit....great question, though, could you be overinsured?

Although I'm somewhat limited to remain in LA, since my wife wants to stay close to her family.

Find a mortgage banker that will give you credit using the lease agreements.You should be able to do a HELOC on your primary residence to get to 90% LTV.VA loans will let you go to 100% LTV as long as the loan is within the county limit and you have benefit available to cover the loan.

My goal is certainly at some point to be involved in higher end flips (upper middle class anyway) because that’s the type of remodeling I enjoy doing but the reality is that my cash is limited.