Help me know what I don't know I don't know

[John Blythe]

Hey all,

Thanks for checking out my post. I'm brand new to REI and am taking in a ton via reading, podcasts, and forum discussions. As you well know there is quite a bit of information floating around out there and it's overwhelming in part. As a result, while I may know certain principles, ideas, and concepts, I don't know how to spot them necessarily when a property/deal is right in front of me.

My goal is to do multi-family housing, 2-4 units for the first few years till I'm comfortable throwing around larger sums of money via commercial/large apartment opportunities. I honestly don't even care about much cash flow at this point so long as I don't blow what money I have saved up in a crash-and-burn scenario with our first few properties. Learning without it costing us too much going in the red, more or less.

With all that said, could these are some properties Zillow threw my way that I'd love some basic feedback on. It doesn't have to be thorough, I just want to know what red flags and opportunities a trained eye can see when looking at this for just a couple minutes.

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2858-Boulevard-P...

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/5928-Devington-R...

Thanks for any assistance, wisdom, advice, and feedback!

Best,