If the owner lives in town, you could even go knock on their door, I find this to be extremely successful when you are going after foreclosed properties.As to your 1st post, you might want to look at city data for growing markets, It looks like Rochester lost population last year, vs if you look at sunbelt cities like, Houston, DFW, Austin, Miami, Orlando, Tampa, these cities saw at a minimum 1% population increase.

Our lawyer provided us with the projected fees for both options and a Series LLC was extremely expensive.What is the ideal number of properties / total asset value for an LLC?

I really see Columbus Ohio as an extremely safe bet for the next 10-20 years.

The makeup of the council is extreme far left.

I do not have any relationship with them but do know they seem to be extremely knowledgeable. 

Also the information provided and the links are extremely helpful.

I extremely passionate about real estate investing for the focus of my sole income to provide for my three  children.

This market is extremely tight and you might have to adjust your math to make things worse. 

Verifying last 2 years of rental history and income extremely important to find the “best of the worst”.Make sure you understand the Class of properties you are looking at and the corresponding results to expect.The City of Detroit has 183 Neighborhoods we’ve analyzed.PM us if you’d like to discuss this logical approach in greater detail!

@Andrew Jessup It's extremely common for the family trust to initially own the real property and then to transfer ownership into an LLC for additional liability protection, with the LLC owned by the family trust.