But many times they dont have a search or survey and you may have to gamble a little by paying for a search up front only to find a bunch of leins.

Would a land survey cover this?  

If you're able to spend a little bit per month to get an Audible membership, check out the books ublished by BiggerPockets as well as the books people mention on the podcast.

It's newer to me, and I'd be diversifying away from the HOA/cookie cutter style rentals that we currently  deal in. 1) In a quick survey of the two areas they seemed FILLED with for sale properties so is it right now a buyer's market there?

Here it is by the numbers...13,988 leads loaded into Datazapp; from that 4,708 phone numbers generated; of those 1,858 vm's were left with the Lead Machine; from those 205 people called back; not counting the angry vm's and "stop calling me texts", I received 1 vm lead, and they had their house listed for full retail on the MLS.This little experiment put me out about $1500 for the annual membership and all the peripheral purchases for Datazapp and the RVM calls.I promise $1500 of direct mail will land me a minimum of two deals.

I haven't seen the survey from H2 2017 but here is the link to H1. 

Perhaps with our new commercial forum discussion areas, we can quickly attract a new crop of people to make that possible . . .That said, I think once people start to see the changes that we've got in the works, we'll quickly start to see the membership blossom.

.**** Please Take our Survey Now ****In the next weeks, we will be bringing on board a new member to the BP team who will be working relentlessly to improve the current features of the site, and who will help us develop a new suite of tools and features to help you with your real estate businesses.

In new markets that you are not very familiar with, what I like to do is do a rent survey and make a list of 10 or so properties that are comparable.

Texas, and some other states use a "survey" based way of designating land.