Find Your Needle in a ...stack of needles

I saw this sign on one of the real estate search sites that I frequent:

But just this week, Modern Family used the phrase, "finding your needle in a stack of needles"

It's exactly what we're trying to do.  How do we find our needle in a haystack?  Our hidden gem?  If this house tomorrow turns out to be a great option, how do we know if we'll have competition in the short sale process? It's all unknown at this point.  But I thought I would describe the process we've used to look for houses.  Most of my research, after asking friends for general vicinity recommendations, has been online.  I save the houses under a gmail category of "houses to watch" - If I'm really interested in learning more about a house, I'll open the the house in one browser.  I will then open additional tabs with the following info:
1. House tab from the real estate site that I found it at (let's say estately.com).
2. Zillow.com - this is a great site for learning the history of the site and the estimated current value.  You can also look at the values of the houses in the neighborhood.
3. Redfin.com - owned by Zillow.  This is a real estate site that is great for giving additional information.
4. Google Maps - I do a virtual walk-through of the neighborhood. I look at the house from street level. I travel the road in front, I look at the houses next store, across the street and behind.  You can learn a lot and save a lot on drive time.

Why the virtual walk-through?
Besides saving us driving time, hHere's an example of why I do this. I looked up a house near a popular shopping area that we were told to look at.  It sounds perfect.  It's got some updates and is on a side street.  BUT - when I looked at the house, I found out that the house to the right of it has turned into a business "Dentures sold here".  I don't think that would be so great.  I did end up driving by the house and found that it really didn't have a yard, it was right next to the dentures house (no space) and we would not be comfortable there.

Another very cheap SMALL house was on the corner of an alley.  For the right price, maybe we could do TINY.  I drove by it.  The house made me laugh.  The yard was super tiny.  The house was super tiny.  And the house next to it towered over the yard of the for sale house.  There would be no privacy.  It was pitiful.