Ok, here is what I would do, say I have a list of 1000 domains to check, I'll run them through majestic, out of 1000 you might have 20 or so with tf and cf which is half reasonable, these get manually checked, e.g look at the links, visit archive.org to see what was on it etc. I don't take PR into account, it doesn't exist. Out of the 20 I will end up with maybe 3 or so actually worth using.
You need a paid sub to whatever link checker you choose to use, I avoid moz lik the plague, majestic or ahefs are pretty close, I choose majestic, what you choose is up to you. Also those low zero tf\cf , da\pa domains with good links, usually have other issues and you can bet those links won't bite for long either. A lot of these good neighbourhood sites are pinging their links more frequently and even visiting the sites. As soon as they see it isn't what it was, the link is gone.
What you want is sites with a half decent link profile and actually try to get the better quality links AFTER you own the site, sure it's work, but the link is based on your content, and your site. metrics good or bad are simply one aspect of filtering target domains. I'm sure the OP's post is useful to people, but to others we've been looking alot deeper than surface metrics for years.
