This might also depend on how much profit my property generates, but looking to get advice from people who have done this before.

@Michael Nijhawan One thing to consider is how much time you are going to put into generating leads, if you are a solo agent you are going to have to dive deep into generating leads.

I'm not sure what you mean by blighted, but, I would recommend using Listsource for lead generation.

All without risking a dime of your own money.And the advice the other gentleman offered with respect to "SEO" and setting up a website-- you may well go ahead and do that, but good luck getting found easily and, also, trying to 'attract' "ma and pa" note sellers (which is most of what I chase) that way is tough because, in many cases (this is my experience and I've been at this 20 plus years) these note holders aren't very educated as to the type of asset they really own and have a limited or no understanding of their options (such as the ability to sell the note to generate cash).

You'll be generating much better returns.Out of curiosity: where is your duplex and what market would you likely invest in?

If you don't have any money for automated lead generation like Investor Carrot, you can go Driving For Dollars and send direct mail/phone calls/door knocks/whatever

Do they have systems in place for lead generation?

I confirmed this in my local market doing my own testing.The keyword "We buy houses in [city]" is the highest keyword you want to bid for.How many houses I own or how many deals I have done this last year are personal questions I don't feel like answering mostly because they have nothing to do with lead generation.

My question here is two-fold - should we pick a city and then try to build this network, or feel out building a network in multiple cities and then pick a location based on where we can generate the strongest network? 

You need to have a 3rd party realtor query the MSL for your zipcode and generate you a list of recent sale and tally them up (last 3-6 months).