I just love the industry, the chase, the feeling of making the deal, the entrepreneurial aspect of it. 

That said -- I think I'll add tow more things:1) On the focus thing -- it's REALLY easy to chase every strategy and money making opportunity.

I don't really want to waste my time chasing down a bunch of owners to buy the redemption rights for properties that the bid at auctions going to be too high.

In my case it definitely is not worth chasing the tenants since they often don't the cash even if I did get a court order against them. 

Only by the time they lowered the price the market was tanking, so they were chasing the market down for months.

It is much more effective for me and what I say depends on where they are in the process and contrary to what you think, most are willing to talk, they are looking for a way out of their problem and they really don't want to chase away some possible help but are basically embarrassed or ashamed.

You can learn more on BP than anywhere else, IF you hang out, and set up a system for researching the blogs, and podcasts specifically for what you are looking for (it's too easy to get distracted and go chasing rabbits otherwise). 

When your financial scenario gets more complex you'll probably find a lot more head aches and it will not be worth your mental sanity and time to focus on price but rather competency and service.The 3 types of lenders are:- bank/retail loan officers which work for a big bank or community bank - Chase/ B of A/ Wells/ or community retail lender- internet lender - ditech/quicken loans/ etc- mortgage bankers/brokers/independent loan officers/specialistsDepending on what you value on the 3 categories up above (Price/Service/Advice) you may want to pick one type of lender over the other. 

Alas, there were upset bids for many weeks and I didn't chase the motivated buyers.

It's not worth chasing after them for rent they won't ever pay anyway.