I looked at all areas within an hour of my house based on fundamental aspects (universities, large institutions, etc).I then drilled down into the census data for a large amount of them to create ratios for comparison.

If you personal situation warrants it, and you are open to it, and you are truly committed to investing in real estate, you might consider relocating to an area where the barriers to entry aren't so ridiculously high.

Zillow took a look at recent data to determine markets where sellers have the power and those where buyers are in control.

The listing history on Redfin shows the home was bought out of auction in Aug. 2009 for $210K with no new sale data since.

If the "Zestimate" (spit, gag, puke) is way off, I will post a pic showing Zillow's (spit) own data that shows how inaccurate their Zestimates (spit) are.

When you have more time than money, commit to learning and finding out the lowest entry point that you can access to get your foot in the door.

The second school of thought is to open one bank account within your 401K, roll all the money into the account, then use ledger entries to keep track of everything (this is how mutual fund companies do it.)

There are two possible ways to get the data.

There are other paid services that will provide data for all the trustee and tax sales in the county as well.

citydata.com is a great resource to get an amazing array of information on demographics, employment, household size, commute times, bedrooms/unit, property type breakdown.. all census data and more..