There are lots of things that you can do on your own if you want to. First of all, on oodle.com and postlets.com you can post rental property at no cost to you. I did this for my rental home in Pennsylvania and it worked great. Those sites feed the information to other sites, and it gets picked up very quickly. There is a website called landlord2landlord where you can register yourself as a rental business and do credit checks. Remember that if you are going to do that that you must have a signed permission from the person you are checking on. I am sure there are other ways to do this if you are internet savvy, but I have not bothered to try another system. Otherwise, you can require references from previous landlords and get employment verification from employers. The other possibility is to hire a property management company who will charge a percentage of the rent to do all of the above things for you. If you do that, get references on property management companies from others--the choice is important in looking after your investment.

You'll need a local agent to assist you with a comprehensive CMA. If you'd like a referral to someone that will provide the initial consultantion at no charge, just send me an email with your address and contact information to vchrisner@kw.com. I have a huge network of agents I work with across the country, and I think I have 2 or 3 pre-screened agents that work in your area.